


Twist or Stick

by Energybeing



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-21 05:24:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 58,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4816700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Energybeing/pseuds/Energybeing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Starling City collapsed, Xander went to help them rebuild.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Buffy or Arrow. Please don’t sue me for using them.
> 
> My knowledge of the Green Arrow comics is so minimal as to be almost non-existent, so I will be working with the TV show. I will also be ignoring the Buffy comics entirely.
> 
> This story starts about a year after ‘Chosen’, and at the start of season 2 for Arrow.

The New Council didn’t have annual meetings yet. They were too new for that. What they did instead was call each other, sometimes from across the world, and say variations on the theme of ‘Yep, everything’s okay over here, no need to come and check up on us, no, honestly there’s not.’ Occasionally they even filed reports, although some of them were more assiduous about that than others. Faith, for example, had never even thought about writing one. Xander had sent off a shopping list, thinking that no one really read them.

Given that the Council had splintered rather early on into different bases and had yet to form a single HQ, he wasn’t entirely wrong.

This was the first time that all of the core Scoobies, as well as most of the Potentials who had fought in Sunnydale, had been all in the same room for some time. Willow thought that it was about time that they did start work on an HQ, seeing as how things were starting to heat up in Cleveland, and certain demon species had decided that they weren’t really that keen on having armies of Slayers all over the place and would quite like to start doing something about it. Hence everyone being there – when a powerful witch wanted you somewhere, it was hard to say no.

No one wanted to volunteer. There was a reason that they had done everything that they had, and that wasn’t because they liked paperwork.

“I vote for Andrew.” Xander said eventually. “Giles can stand behind him with a big pointy stick until he gets the hang of things.”

Faith grinned. “I like that plan.”

“Got to say, there’s definitely something going for it.” Buffy added.

Giles looked like he would rather be just about anyone else, as well as somewhere else entirely.

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Willow said, sounding very self-satisfied. “Giles is good at all that old-school Watcher-y stuff, and Andrew… well, yeah.”

Giles muttered something about not liking how things were run around here, but didn’t argue. She had a point.

Andrew stood. “I would be most honoured to-“

“Oh, give it a rest.” Giles growled.

Andrew sat.

“So.” Xander said, changing the subject. “I was thinking of taking a few Slayers and heading over to Starling City. Thoughts?”

“Can I just point out that this shouldn’t really be how decisions are formed? We are an international demon-hunting organisation. We should have _some_ kind of process.” Giles said grumpily.

Xander rolled his eye. “Noted. I suggest that you make that your first order of business.”

Caridad leant towards the person next to her and whispered “Where’s Starling City?” She had spent a large part of the last year fighting Yetis in Siberia.

“Ooh ooh ohh!” Andrew said excitedly, virtually jumping out of his seat. “The city where a billionaire made an earthquake machine and collapsed half the city! The city with the vigilante! That is so cool! I want to go!”

Caridad looked at him. “Is he serious?”

Xander nodded. “’fraid so.”

“What’s happing in Starling isn’t demonic though.” Giles pointed out. “It’s not really our field.”

Xander started ticking points off on his fingers. “Firstly, they’ve got the kind of extreme night life where they need a guy with a bow to sort things out. Even if there aren’t demons involved, that’s still something worth looking into. Secondly, if billionaires start making earthquake machines, then that’s kind of a sign that something weird is going on. I’m thinking killer robots next, and that’s right up our alley. Thirdly, it’s a collapsed city, and we kind of collapsed Sunnydale. So we should probably help sort this one out, right? You know, like karma? Fourthly, I mean, it already begins with S. So did Sunnydale. Coincidence, much?”

Buffy blinked. “Um, yeah? Xan, that kind of is.”

“You must have been planning that speech for a really long time.” Faith commented.

Xander shrugged. “All through my trip here. All three seconds of it.” He gestured at Willow. “She didn’t even let me finish my lunch.”

“Hey, Red? You might want to let him have a bit more time to plan next time. That last point is the kind of thing that turns a person’s brain to mush.”

“Hey!” Xander said indignantly. “Anyway, I already asked Vi to be my deputy and everything. Besides, if we’re meant to be helping people, why not send a construction guy to a city that collapsed on itself? Besides, I can make sure that no other billionaires build weapons of mass destruction either.”

“I bet Vi just volunteered so she could have a shooting contest with the Hood.” Buffy said. Vi shrugged, but didn’t deny it.

“You’re going to go no matter what we say, aren’t you?” Giles said. 

Xander nodded. “Yep. It’s too interesting not to go. An earthquake machine and a vigilante archer? C’mon, you don’t really expect me to miss out on that?”

“Well, as my first decision as acting… whatever my title is, I say that you go.” Giles said.

Xander clapped his hands together. “Way to go, G-Man!”

~*~

Thea Queen didn’t work behind the bar very often. When you’re the daughter of a billionaire and you work behind a bar, you tend to get hit on by some very drunk people, just so they can say they could. Even more so when your mother was accused of helping to collapse half a city.

But since Oliver hadn’t been back five minutes, and she had taken over Verdant, and bar tenders kept calling in sick or just not coming (having half a city collapse wasn’t great for business) she didn’t have much of a choice.

A man in an eyepatch came and leant on the bar. “What can I get you?”

“Water.”

Thea blinked. The amount of people who came to the club and ordered water was approximately none. Still, he was a customer, and this was a quiet night, so she went and got him some.

“I’ll have you know that water is a very manly drink.” Xander commented.

“I’m sure it is.” Thea said, very carefully not smirking.

“You’re probably thinking ‘Hey, a guy in an eyepatch, he could order any drink he likes, and he picks _water_?’ Well, I happen to like water.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, but you thought it.”

“Look, Mr Mind-Reader, if you’re so bothered about what I think then why don’t you order a different drink? This is a night club, we have all kinds of alcohol.”

Xander shrugged. “I didn’t come here for the alcohol.” 

“Okay.” Thea walked off to get another customer their drink.

“Came here for the atmosphere.” Xander called after her. “I used to go to a place. A lot smaller than this. Not nearly as nice. But still, I liked it. Used to go most nights.”

Thea came back. It was a quiet night, and at least this guy wasn’t hitting on her. Besides, bar tenders were supposed to listen to people in this kind of situation. “What happened?”

“Oh, it collapsed, along with the rest of my town.” Xander said airily. “So I'm here being all nostalgic.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” He looked at her and smirked. “At least I'm old enough to drink the stuff you serve here.”

Thea smiled and shook her head. “A man who doesn’t drink alcohol has no advantage over someone who can’t.”

The man tilted his head. “You sound like you’re quoting someone.”

“Maybe I am.”

“So, Miss Snooty, do you have the time?”

“You have a watch. Besides, what makes you think I’ll give you the time of day when you start calling me names?”

“You started it. And my watch is still on Portugal time. Normally I’d change it on the flight over, but I, uh, didn’t have a chance to do that this time. And I can’t actually remember the time difference right now.”

Thea told him the time, and Xander nodded and changed his watch. “Anyway, as nice as it’s been to be subtly mocked for drinking water at a night club, I’ve got to go. I’m expecting some to call me.” he flashed her a smile. “So, Miss Snooty, this is goodbye. Try not to laugh at people’s drink choices next time.”

~*~

The Mayor of Starling City was giving a speech. People in sharp suits and pretty dresses were listening raptly.

And a young woman wearing a fluffy hat was tugging on the sleeve of a security guard. “Excuse me.”

“Not now, girl.”

“Excuse me.”

“Look, girl, it’s my job to look out for threats. How am I meant to do that when you keep bothering me?”

“Well, about those threats… there are four guys wearing masks and carrying guns lying unconscious in a room down the hall.”

“What?”

“I did try to tell you, but you didn’t seem to want to listen.”

“Look, if this is a prank…”

Vi fluttered her eyes beneath her fluffy hat. She didn’t look like the kind of person to prank anyone. “Would I do that?”

The guard followed her, and sure enough, there were four unconscious masked gunmen, just as she had said. “Did you see what happened?”

“Oh yeah. I knocked them out.”

The guard whirled around in surprise. Vi held out a card. “We did try to talk to the Mayor earlier. We suspected that there would be some kind of threat today. Maybe you’ll listen to us now?”


	2. Chapter Two

“So.” Mayor Altman said. “How exactly do you think that you can help me, Mr Harris?”

“Well, I think the fact that we took out four masked gunmen is kind of an indication.” Xander said. “I mean, I was really impressed with the way that your security let them through and all, but sometimes it’s better not to have gunmen crash your party.”

“You’re a security firm?”

Xander shook his head. “No, not really. We… um, we help the helpless. We arrived a couple of days ago, and we’ve spent a lot of that time organising the building of temporary housing so we can give people as many thresholds… uh, roofs over their head as we can. We’re to do whatever we can. We tried to talk to you to see what we could do before, but I guess you were busy.”

“If you want to help, all you have to do is watch the news.” Mayor Altman sat back in his chair. He looked tired. “This town went off the rails when Merlyn collapsed the Glades. No. It happened even before that, when the Hood showed up. Those men you dealt with? Copycats. I don’t know where the Hood went. Maybe Donner and the rest of the people at the DA’s office are right, and he is just a menace.”

“Well, he doesn’t seem to be around anymore, so there’s that.” Xander pointed out. “As for watching the news, well, I caught the evening show. Didn’t see a single mention of concerned third parties stopping copycat vigilantes attacking the Mayor. Or copycat vigilantes full stop. I’m thinking that the news might not be as reliable as I would like.”

“Yes, you’re right. We’ll order a press release in the morning, but right now we just don’t have the time.” Altman sighed. “Merlyn broke the city, Mr Harris. We had a breach at Iron Heights – we’re not even sure how many prisoners got loose – and someone’s been taking medical supplies that were supposed to get to a hospital in the Glades. On top of that, there are gangs running riot out there. The police can barely get in the Glades these days. If you want to help, then go out there. I guarantee that you’ll find something to do.”

“Thanks for the suggestion.” Xander stood. “We’ll get on that. In the meantime, next time you need security for an event, I suggest coming to us.”

“Mr Harris, I have to tell you that I wouldn’t even have thought about listening to you if it wasn’t for the fact that we need all the help we can get. I doubt that you’re over 25, and from what I’ve seen of the people who work for you, they’re even younger than that. I’ve never even heard of your company. But we need help. This city needs help, and not the kind of help that ends up with it being destroyed in an ‘earthquake’ again.”

“It’s the eyepatch, isn’t it? I swear, this thing makes me look ten years younger.”

~*~

Vi sat in front of Xander. “How’d it go?”

“Well, it reminded me of why I don’t like Mayors. But he’s going to let us help, so there’s that. He thinks we’re too young.”

“He might have a point there. Most of us can’t even buy alcohol.”

“Pfft. We were vigilantes fighting evil when we were in high school. This Hood, wherever he is, he ain’t got nothing on us.”

“Speaking of vigilantes… you know how the girls are out patrolling every night? Well, last night one of them saw something… weird.”

“Weird how? Demon weird or killer robot weird?”

“You know that the killer robot thing isn’t going to happen, right?”

“You say that now… anyway, what was it?”

“Well, she was out and she saw these guys attacking a girl. She was going to sort them out when some guy in a red hoodie stepped in. The girl got away, but the guys were going to start in on the hoodie, when out of nowhere a blonde wearing black leather and domino mask appeared and beat them all up with a bow staff.”

Xander blinked. “Okay. Did you call Buffy to ask her why she’s in town cosplaying as Felicia Hardy?”

“Pretty sure it wasn’t her. And I didn’t see any claws.”

“Okay. So first we have someone who thinks they’re Robin Hood, and now we may or may not have someone who thinks that they’re the Black Cat. This is one messed up city.”

“You want us to see if we can find her?”

“I guess. The Mayor seemed pretty down on vigilantes, and we should try to stay in his good books for at least a little while.” Xander paused. “Actually, wait a second. We can actually work with people in power for once. That means we can ask the cops if they know someone who gets in trouble and wears a red hoodie.”

“Right.” Vi said slowly. “Because people wearing red hoodies are really uncommon. And we already have a witness.”

“Shush. I want to work with the authorities. I’ve never done that before.”

~*~

As it turned out, the police did know someone who wore red hoodies and got into trouble a lot. After a quick call from the Mayor’s office, they were even willing to tell Xander what his name was and where they might find him.

Which was why Xander went to the Verdant club for the second night in a row, looking for Roy Harper. Vi went with him.

Xander made his way to the bar. This didn’t take long. People tended to move out of the way of someone who glowered and wore an eyepatch. It was one of the few upsides of losing an eye. “Hey, Miss Snooty!”

Thea rolled her eyes. “What can I get you now? Lemonade? Maybe a glass of milk?”

“Actually, I'm here on business. I’m looking for Roy Harper.”

“Why?” Thea’s voice was guarded.

“We hear that he saw something last night. We just wanted to ask him a couple of questions.”

“No way are you two cops.”

Xander turned to Vi. “What have I told you about that hat? No one is ever going to take us seriously if you wear a hat like that.”

“Don’t mock my hat.” Vi said peaceably. “Anyway, I think calling her Miss Snooty _might_ have given her a tip that we aren’t with the police.”

“Fair point.” Xander turned back to Thea. “We’re not cops. We are… a concerned third party. We just want to ask him a couple of questions. That’s all.”

“Well, if you’re not with the police, then I don’t have to tell you where he is.”

“If you don’t, then I’ll be forced to go out on that dance floor. Let me tell you, seeing that might just scar you for life.”

“You’re really not good at threats, are you?” Vi muttered.

“Have you seen me dance? No? Then you should be can’t judge how good the threat is.”

Thea frowned. “Are you two for real?”

“Are you?” Xander shot back.

“You must’ve put a lot of thought into that one.”

“Amazing.” Vi said, to no one in particular. “You know, when you see people bicker on TV, you don’t think that people actually do that. But you’ve known each other for what, two minutes?”

“Look, um… what’s your name?” Xander asked. When it became obvious that Thea wasn’t going to answer, he ploughed ahead. “Can we just see the manager?”

“She’s busy.” Thea said shortly.

“I don’t think I made a good first impression on her.” Xander said to Vi.

“No, really? Normally you’re so good at those.”

“Thanks for that.” Xander said acidly. “Listen, person who is going to be called Miss Snooty until I get an actual name for you, if you see Roy, can you give him this card and tell him that if he knows anything about leather clad blondes that he should call us.”

Thea took the card on instinct. Xander and Vi turned to leave. “You know, this working with the authorities thing isn’t nearly as efficient as I thought it would be. Still, at least we get business cards, so there’s that.”

~*~

Thea grabbed a cocktail server and told her to find Roy. He appeared about a minute later. “What’s going on?”

Thea held out the card. “I hear that you’ve been out getting yourself killed by degrees. Again. And something about a blonde in black leather.”

“That’s not what it sounds like, I swear.”

“Look, Roy, I can’t do this. I love you. I do. But this extra-curricular nightlife you’ve got going – its going to get you killed. Especially if you’re getting yourself mixed up in-“

“She’s a vigilante.” Roy said hurriedly. “Like the Hood. She saved me, Thea. It was amazing. She just swooped in out of nowhere and saved me.”

“Of course she did.” Thea sighed. “Roy, I don’t care if every vigilante in the city shows up to save you. Sooner or later – and I'm betting sooner – you’re going to get yourself killed. And I can't have that. You have to stop.” 

“I can’t. Have you seen this city? It’s a mess. Everything’s falling apart. If I can save even one person, then it’s worth it. I can help people.”

“You can get yourself killed. Like the Hood. He died along with the other 503 people, Roy. And I can’t let that happen to you.”

Roy took a deep, steadying breath. “I don’t want to argue.”

“Then stop talking.”

“I love you, Thea. You know that.”

“Then stop. Leave the crusades to the vigilantes. Because, if you don’t, you’ll lose me. And then you’ll get yourself killed.”

“I… I’ll try.”

Both of them knew that he was lying, but right then and there, that was enough.


	3. Chapter Three

Roy hadn’t planned to find trouble. He’d just been out for a drive.

Admittedly, he wasn’t driving his car. He didn’t actually own a car. And if he did own a car, the car wouldn’t have a police scanner in it. But if, by some string of coincidences, Roy _did_ own a car which _did_ have a police scanner, then he still wouldn’t be lurking in an alley waiting for a call to come in.

Unless, of course, he was looking for trouble. Which he wasn’t doing.

It just looked like he was.

So, as Roy was heading down the street towards the FEMA van that was being harassed by two men in black on motorcycles, he was taken completely by surprise by someone knocking on his window. So surprised that he almost swerved off the road.

The person who had knocked on his window was also driving a motorcycle, but Roy suspected that she wasn’t with the other two.

For one thing, even though she didn’t seem to have trouble with her bike, she looked like she couldn’t be much more than five feet and was tiny with it. On top of that, her helmet was bright pink and had flowers on it.

She seemed utterly unconcerned that they were heading towards some sort of trouble, though. She gestured at Roy to roll his window down. When he did, she yelled something unintelligible at him – roaring motorbikes and rushing winds weren’t really conducive to having a conversation. So he felt completely justified in ignoring every that she said, because he hadn't the faintest idea what she had said.

So Roy proceeded to happily run one of the motorbike thugs off the road, before turning to deal with the other one.

Only to see the girl in the flowery helmet drive up to behind the thug and shove him. It didn’t look like it could possibly be a hard shove, but he went flying.

Leaving his motorbike skidding across the road directly towards Roy, who at his speed didn’t really want to crash into anything and so swerved. Instead, he crashed into a pile of building supplies, and he didn’t have the faintest idea of what happened after that.

~*~

When Roy woke up, he was sitting in an armchair. His second thought was the wonder what he was doing there – his first was too preoccupied with wondering why he ached so much.

“You’re not very good at this, are you?” Roy’s eyes focused on a man sitting in a chair opposite him. He wore an eyepatch, which didn’t seem to bode well for his chances of being in a good place. On the other hand, he was grinning as though he’d said something funny, which didn’t seem like the kind of thing that an evil kidnapping man wearing an eyepatch would do.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the one asking the questions here.” The man said. Xander (for it was he) somewhat undercut his stern tone by grinning. He’d been wanting to say something like that for years. “Are you Roy Harper?”

Roy blinked. “What’s it to you?”

“Thought so. You know, if you’re going to wear red hoodies all the time, you might want to think about getting better trained so that people don’t know it’s you all the time. I gave someone at Verdant our card and told her to give it you. We have some questions for you.”

“Yeah, not really keen on answering anything right now.”

Xander shrugged. “Fair enough. They aren’t really very important questions, anyway. I'm pretty sure we can answer them ourselves. Where do you want us to drop you off? Or do you want to make your own way to… wherever?”

“Wait, what? That’s it? You’re just going to let me go?” 

“Of course. Oh, you thought we were the bad guys?” Xander laughed delightedly. “Did you hear that? He thought we were the bad guys!”

“I heard.” Someone said in a thick South African drawl. “Thanks to him, the actual bad guys got away.”

Xander shook his head at Roy. “Yeah, bad move on your part there. That’s Rose, by the way. She’s the girl who probably saved your life.”

Rose stepped into Roy’s field of vision. She was tiny. She looked more like a doll more than anything else, and if she was over 18 then Roy was the Hood. There was no way that she was capable of handling a motorbike, let alone shoving a grown man so hard that he went flying. “Yeah, no way.”

Rose rolled her eyes. Xander said “You should probably get some better training before you go throwing assertions like that around. Rose here could beat you with one hand behind her back, her eyes closed and her feet tied together.”

“Right.” Roy said, not believing a word of it. “So I can go now, right?”

Xander waved a hand. “Yeah, of course. Door’s over there. Listen, if you happen to see the blonde in the black leather, call us. You have our card. And by blonde in black leather, I mean the vigilante, not just some random blonde in black leather.”

As Roy walked out, he dimly heard Rose say “You know, you didn’t have to add that last bit.”

~*~

“So.” Xander said after Roy left. “What happened?”

Rose shrugged. “I was out on patrol, and I saw these guys on bikes chasing a FEMA truck. You said that medical supplies were going missing, so I was going to sort them out when that _boytjie_ showed up. He took care of one, I took care of the other, and then he crashed into a pile of building materials. Don’t know why. Guess he's not that good at driving. I pulled him out, made sure he was okay and then went after the truck. Found someone had chucked a couple of daggers clean through the front window, killed the driver and the guard and taken all the stuff.”

“Daggers? Why is everyone using old school weapons around here?”

Rose looked amused. “You know we all have daggers and swords and bows around here, right?”

“Yeah, but we fight demons. They just fight each other.”

“But they look cool doing it.”

Xander thought it over, and then nodded. “Fair point.”

~*~

When Roy made it home, it was late. Late enough that some people could conceivably call it early.

Which didn’t stop Thea from waiting up for him. She looked angry. Roy didn’t need an angry girlfriend right then. What he needed was a shower, and then a long night’s sleep.

“Where have you been?”

“Talking to the guy who gave you his card.” Technically true. Hopefully Thea would drop the subject there and never, ever pick it back up.

“For hours?”

“What can I say, he’s a chatty guy.”

Thea looked like she would have liked to discount that entirely, but she had met Xander. It was a reasonable enough description. “And you couldn’t have called to say where you were?”

“Didn’t think it would take that long. That guy is really thorough. Listen, would I you mind talking about this is in the morning? I want a shower. And then I’d like to see if I can sleep right through to next week.”

“What was his name?”

Roy blinked. “What?”

Thea crossed her arms. “The guy you were speaking to. What was his name?”

Damn. Maybe Roy should’ve actually looked at the card before using the eyepatch guy as an excuse. Or asked him his name. “Uh… Nick?”

“Nice try. The card says his name is Xander. So where were you really?”

“Robbing a liquor store.”

“I can’t do this, Roy. I can’t just sit by and watch as you go out every night and-“

“Have you spoken to your mom yet? You know, the one who dropped a city on 502 people. The one who’s locked away in prison. Or your brother the billionaire, who so far has used all of those billions… to go on some kind of skiing holiday. Neither of them helped the city. Someone has to. The police don’t even go into the Glades these days.”

“Just because things are bad doesn’t mean that they’re going to get better if you go and get yourself killed. I’m _worried_ about you, Roy.”

“The Hood saved my life. He made me see that… I haven’t done anything. My life has been… maybe he’s dead. Maybe he gave up. But whatever happened to him, _someone_ has to help this city. I’m not some fancy archer with a quiver full of cool toys, but I’m helping people, Thea.”

“Doesn’t mean that I have to sit around and hope _every single night_ that you make it back okay. With the Hood, no one knew who he was. No one knows if he had accomplices, or whatever. He was a lone wolf. But you… you have me. And if you keep going, you aren’t going to have even that.” Thea said thickly, before walking out.

Roy stood there without moving for several long seconds. Then he said in a voice barely louder than a whisper “This is bigger than us, Thea.”

~*~

Thea hadn’t been back to the mansion for a long time. Not since Merlyn’s earthquake machine had gone off.

She was rather surprised to see that Oliver was up and fully dressed. It was ridiculously early in the morning.

“Thea? What are you doing here?”

“Had a fight with Roy.” Thea said shortly, heading past him and towards her bedroom. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to go to sleep, and maybe when she woke up everything would be better.

Oliver grabbed her arm. Not hard. In fact the grip was gentle enough that she barely noticed it was there – but even though she tried to pull away, it was like an iron manacle. She couldn’t shift him at all. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Okay, it looked like she wasn’t going anywhere, not if her brother’s grip on her arm was anything to go by. “He goes out every night and, I don’t know, fights crime or something. And he comes back every night and he’s all over bruises, and… one day he’s not going to come back, Ollie, and I just can’t deal with that.”

Oliver let go and took a step back. “He… what?”

“He figures, since the Hood’s gone someone needs to step up and it might as well be him. But the Hood… he _died_. No one’s seen him since the quake, which means he died. And if Roy doesn’t stop, he’s going to be end up just like he did.”

Oliver sighed and rubbed his eyes. Just for a moment, he looked so tired that Thea remembered that she wasn’t the only one who wanted to go to bed. “What are you doing up, anyway?”

Oliver flashed her a smile. Maybe he was too tired, or too preoccupied, but it was a pallid shadow of his standard thousand-watt smile that she remembered so well. “A CEO’s work is never done. Listen, Thea, I’ll talk to Roy. See if I can’t get him to stop.”

“Good luck with that.”

Thea went up to bed, but she dimly heard the sound of Oliver leaving.

~*~

Felicity and Diggle were waiting for him in the Foundry.

So was the costume.


	4. Chapter Four

The busiest times for nightclubs was, unsurprisingly, at night.

But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t stuff to be done during the day. Hence why Thea was there, taking inventory on the alcohol and arranging interviews for a new bartender, because she didn’t want to be stuck behind the bar for another night.

She was taken completely by surprise when Xander and Vi walked in. To her credit, it looked as though Xander was surprised to see her as well. “Uh, do you live here or something?”

“What do you want now?” Thea said tiredly. The downside of being a manager of a night club was that she tended to be up for a large percentage of the night and still had to be awake comparatively early. She didn’t need someone like Xander coming in.

“I was wondering if you had a pack of cards. Playing cards, I mean.”

Thea blinked. “This is a nightclub. Not a casino. Or, you know, one of those shops that actually sells cards.”

“You sure? I learned a bunch of card tricks back in Portugal, and you look like you could do with being amazed by a little magic. Although maybe you always look down your nose at people, so what do I know?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking that you didn’t really come here to dazzle me with what I’m _sure_ are the most amazing card tricks known to man.”

“I’m hurt that you doubt my card trick skills. You don’t see me criticising your customer relations, do you?” Xander paused. “Well, until a couple of seconds ago, I mean.”

“You know, I can always leave you two to take care of your obvious sexual tension, if you want.” Vi interjected.

Both Xander and Thea spun around to face her. “ _What?_ ”

“Oh, come on! You two can't even be in the same room as each other for three seconds without bickering. Any second now and you’ll be jumping on each other.”

Thea flushed.

Xander said coolly “You know that real life doesn’t work like that, don’t you Vi? That kind of thing only happens on TV.”

“Okay. Keep telling yourself that.”

Xander decided to ignore Vi utterly. “Anyway. I didn’t come here to see you. I didn’t even have the faintest idea that you would be here. I thought I’d lead with the card trick thing so that you wouldn’t be all snooty and haughty when I asked if Roy was around.”

“What do you want with Roy _now_?”

“See? _That’s_ what I’m talking about! That, right there, is why I call you Miss Snooty. That patronising exasperation.”

Thea stood there, waiting for Xander to actually get to the point.

“We talked to him a little last night, but we have a-“

“Wait, what? You actually spoke to him last night?”

“Yep.” Xander said slowly. “Don’t know what’s with the incredulity though.”

“But he didn’t even know-“ Thea paused and took a deep breath. “He’s at the back.”

Xander smiled brightly. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

~*~

“Hey, Harper!” Xander called. “You here?”

There was a clank, like someone putting down a barrel a little too clumsily. Roy stepped out from behind a stack of beer barrels. “What?”

“You know that car you crashed yesterday? Turns out it was stolen.”

Roy’s face went carefully blank. “Don’t know what you're talking about.”

“Uh, yeah, you do. You left your fingerprints all over it.”

“That tends to happen when it’s your own car.”

Xander dragged a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m not going to turn you in. In fact, I’m going to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime. I saw the police scanner in the wreckage, Roy. I know you go out hunting for trouble. If you do it in stolen cars… well, even if you don’t get killed then you’re going to get busted for grand theft auto. So here’s the offer – you train with us. Because trust me, you suck at this vigilante business. I mean, really, I’m surprised you haven’t been killed already. We’re better, there are more of us, and more importantly we own our own vehicles.”

“No thanks.” Roy turned to leave.

“I don’t think you understood.” Xander called after him. “I’m offering you the opportunity of _having_ a lifetime. Because the way you're going, that’s not going to-“

“Harper!” A new voice called out.

“Wow, I’m really popular today.” Roy murmured.

Oliver came into the room. He didn’t come in through the same door as Xander and Vi had. When Xander looked around to see where he had come from, he couldn’t see any other entrances. Xander doubted that he had been lurking in behind a keg all that time, so… where had he appeared from?

“Who are you?”

“Concerned third party.” Xander squinted at Oliver. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Vi elbowed him without looking away from Oliver. “You know that guy who got shipwrecked on an island for 5 years?”

“Tom Hanks?”

“No, Oliver Queen.”

“Oh yeah. I heard about that.” Xander extended a hand, which after a second Oliver shook. Afterwards, Xander looked at his hand thoughtfully. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to talk to Roy. Roy, at least _think_ about what I said.”

~*~

When they left, Xander said to Vi “I don’t suppose you know where Castaway has been since to Merlyn set off his earthquake machine?”

“On holiday.” Vi said instantly. Xander shot her a look. “What?”

“ _Someone’s_ got a celebrity crush.”

Vi looked like she was about to deny it, but then she just shrugged and said “He’s pretty.”

“Well, how would you like to follow a pretty billionaire around for a few days?”

Vi started back in surprise. “What?”

“You know how you get calluses on your hand from using a bow? No, wait, you're a Slayer, you probably don’t. Well, anyway, that guy has them. And if he’s been out of town since the quake, then… I guess we found the Hood.”

“Right. Because you noticed calluses on his hand. Of course.”

“What? I’m an observant guy, okay? Plus, I only have one eye so my other senses compensate. Or something.”

“Admit it. You just have a hunch.” 

“Don’t tell me you don’t want to stalk your crush.”

“Oh, no, I’m going to do it. I just doubt your detective skills, Sherlock.”

Xander gave a big sigh. “Everyone’s doubting me today. It’s very sad.”

~*~

“So.” Roy said, crossing his arms. “Let me guess. Thea wanted you to talk to me.”

Oliver didn’t reply.

“I’m not going to stop, you know. Even if we… I… it means too much.”

“I remember feeling like that.” Oliver said quietly. “The world just… stopped working. I mean, all those people out there, they know that Merlyn basically destroyed the city but they don’t think about everything he did, all the people he killed and bribed and threatened so that his great Undertaking would happen. They don’t think about what it takes to make something like that possible. Everything that needs to happen.” He focused on Roy. “And taking out underlings on the street isn’t going to get you anywhere. If you’re going to accomplish anything then you need to go after the head.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I'm just one guy. There are whole streets where I’d get gunned down just for walking down them. If I can clean up the streets even a little bit, then that makes it worth it.”

“Thea didn’t ask me to be here.” Oliver said suddenly. “I was going to tell you to stop, but… those two, the ones who were here just now. You should take their offer. Maybe that way you’ll actually get something done.”

“You heard that?” Roy said. Then he processed what Oliver had just said. “Hold on a second. You're not telling me to stay off the streets.”

“I doubt you would listen to me if I did.” Oliver said with a tiny smile. “But I will say this – leave Thea. I am not going to have my sister involved in this. She’s already told you what would happen if you kept going out every night. I’m not going to let you hurt her.”

“I see.” Roy said neutrally, carefully not committing to anything.

“Anyway, those streets you mentioned… are they really that bad?”

~*~

For a Slayer, tailing someone was easy. Especially if they were only human. Slayers were good at sticking to shadows and avoiding things that had a lot keener senses that a human, so when Vi followed Oliver she was pretty confident that she wouldn’t lose him.

That is, until he rounded a corner and completely vanished from sight.

~*~

“Felicity, I have something for you to look into.” Oliver said as he walked into his office.

“Good morning to you too.” Felicity grumbled absently. Then, louder, she said “What is it?”

“I hear that there’s a gang in the Glades that’s a little too well-armed for my liking. Seems to be calling himself the Mayor.”

“On it.”

“That’s not all. I also want you to look into... a concerned third party with ties to the police. I don’t know what they’re called, but they seem to have resources. One of them tried to tail me.”

“Concerned third party?” Felicity asked. “That doesn’t sound at all shady. I’ll see what I can find, but they sound like some kind of contractor. They don’t usually leave a digital trail.”

“Still, see what you can find.” Oliver didn’t tell her that Roy may or may not be joining them soon. He got the feeling that she wouldn’t approve.


	5. Chapter Five

After Oliver and Xander left, Roy stood still for about a minute. He didn’t continue moving barrels. He didn’t think he had enough brain power to spare for anything, even something as easy as that.

Both of them had told him that he didn’t need to stop. That he could still save people. That was the first time that anyone had told him that. He had had Thea telling him for months that if he didn’t stop he’d get himself killed, and he’d been sneaking behind her back and feeling guilty and then annoyed at her whenever she inevitably caught him out.

And now there were two people, one of whom was Thea’s _brother_ , who were both telling him that wasn’t true.

It was kind of a surreal experience, really.

Xander’s offer was kind of compelling, too. Even though Rose was tiny, she had dealt with that motorbike thug easily enough, and presumably she had been the one to pull him from the wreckage. And Xander had said that there was more of them, too. A team of people out on the streets, helping people – if that didn’t make a difference, he didn’t know what would.

But on the other hand, there was Thea. Roy was absolutely 100% certain that Thea wouldn’t approve if he swapped one crusade for… well, a better equipped version of the same thing. And he didn’t want to disappoint her. Not again. After her mother had helped, even unwillingly, to collapse half the city and then her brother had vanished on some skiing trip just when she needed him the most, Thea needed something stable in her life. Something that wasn’t going out and getting beaten up every night.

Roy wished that could be him.

He just wasn’t sure that it could be.

He left the backroom and went to find Thea. He waited patiently while she finished a phone call with a distributor, and then said “I need to take the rest of the day off.”

She was suspicious. Of course she was. Roy would have been too, in her shoes. “Why?”

“I think Xander just offered me a job.”

Thea blinked. “Okay. I'm going to have to ask why to that one too, aren’t I?”

Roy grimaced and looked away. “You know when I said I was talking to him? That was true. Technically. In a manner of speaking. I _did_ talk to him – but only after I tried to stop some people of motorbikes from robbing one of the FEMA trucks. In a stolen car.”

“Oh, _Roy…_ ”

“Yeah. He called me an idiot too, so don’t you worry about that. He thinks if I don’t stop then I’m either going to get killed or busted for grand theft auto, so you’re right about that one. But then he came here today and, in his words, gave me the offer of having a lifetime. He wasn’t all that clear on what it was, but… if it means I don’t have to lose you, then I am taking it like a shot.”

“You don’t even know what he does.”

“He helps people. The FEMA truck? If I hadn’t been there and, uh, messed things up, he says that he could have made sure it got through safely.”

Thea looked at him closely, and then, to Roy’s complete and utter surprise, hugged him. “Go. See what the job is. Just… be careful, okay?”

Roy kissed the top of her head. “Of course.”

~*~

Roy remembered where the building that he’d first met Xander had been. He’d figured that it might be a useful thing to know.

As it turned out, he was completely wrong about that one. 

There was no one there. Not a single person. More than that, there wasn’t even any indication that there had been anyone there, at least not recently. It looked like it had been abandoned since the quake – there was dust everywhere, and the only thing that had disturbed it was his footprints.

Okay, maybe Xander was a _little_ bit more professional than his demeanour would suggest. Still, Roy had his card, and he had a cell phone. He called him.

“Hello Roy. I guess you thought about the offer. Sorry about moving on you, but you know how it is.”

Roy looked around for a hidden camera. If there was one, then it was _really_ well hidden. “How do you know where I am?”

“We’re very good at what we do. Also, Rose has been following you since left Verdant.”

Roy poked his head outside. Sure enough, Rose was leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the street. She gave him a friendly wave. Roy was pretty sure that he would have noticed someone following him, especially if it was someone he recognised. Maybe the tiny girl was more experienced at this than he would have thought.

“Okay. We need to talk about that offer you made.”

“Sure, but I make it a policy never to talk over the phone. Meet me-“

“You make it a policy to never speak over the phone? That’s what phones are for. That’s what you’re doing right now.”

“Shush. Don’t poke holes. Meet me at Magnuson Plaza.”

“The abandoned parking building?”

“Look, if we’re going to have a secret meeting then we’re going to do it right, okay? Stop bursting my bubble.”

Roy went outside. Rose was waiting on a motorbike that she looked way too young to drive, flowery helmet aside. She tossed him a helmet which, thankfully, wasn’t nearly as girly and told him to get on. He did, feeling like an idiot. Thankfully no one he knew would recognise him wearing the helmet.

~*~

For an abandoned parking building, Magnuson Plaza didn’t look all that abandoned.

Or much like a parking building either, for that matter.

There were groups of girls everywhere. Most of them looked about Rose’s age, although a few were older.

And there were all sparring with each other. There were people fighting barehanded, with staves, with swords, with daggers. There was even one girl with a whip.

They were all good at it too – well, apart from the girl with the whip who seemed to think she was Indiana Jones, going by the hat she was wearing. However, even as Roy watched she grew exasperated, dropped the whip and the promptly somersaulted over the girl she was sparring with and knocked her flat. It was, he realised, the girl who had come to the club with Xander.

There was only one other male there, and that was Xander. He was sitting at a table, and for some reason that Roy couldn’t even begin to fathom, he was making a house of cards. “Roy! Come on over. Take a seat.”

“What is all of this?”

Xander gave him a long look, and then added another card to the house. “Yeah, you’re not ready for that yet. Let’s just say that I’m part of an organisation that helps people out, and these are the people who do the helping.”

“But they’re all so young!”

“And you’re what, 20? 21? Besides, they can handle themselves.”

Roy watched as Rose joined a group of four where everyone seemed to be engaged in a free for all. Before Roy even knew what had happened, she knocked two of them on the floor and had one of them was in a headlock. The other one had run away.

“Okay. So what am I doing here?”

Xander carefully added another card. By now, the house took up most of the table. “Local knowledge. We don’t have anyone from Starling, and working with the authorities isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Plus, if you’re not here, I’m pretty sure that you’re going to still be out there most nights and you’re going to get in our way.”

Roy sat back in his chair and didn’t say anything for a long time. Xander kept methodically building his house of cards. Eventually, he said “I have a question.”

“You’ve basically done nothing but ask questions since you got here, but sure, go ahead.”

“I’m dating someone. She, uh, doesn’t approve of my… nightly activities. I don’t think she’ll approve if I join some vigilante club.”

“Trust me, Roy, it is going to be a _long_ time before we let you out in the field. That’s not a problem. Besides, we have plenty of muscle. You have contacts, and that’s a lot more useful to us right now. Your girl? Tell her… tell her I offered you a job teaching girls self-defence. It’s kind of true. And don’t go out at night. We’ve got that end covered.”

Roy paused. Not for long. “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, first, I’m going to ask you to tell me about what needs sorting out in this city. And then I’m going to pass you over to Rose, who’s going to teach you how not to get hit.”

The first thing that came to mind was the Mayor and his military-grade weaponry. Roy didn’t stop to think that the reason that that, in particular, came to mind so readily was because Oliver had been questioning him on that very same topic. So he told Xander where he was based and what his gang’s capabilities were.

Xander nodded sagely a couple of times and kept building his house of cards. When Roy was done, he called Rose over. “Rose, you’ve met Roy. He’s going to be training with us. I want you to teach him how not to get hit.”

“Why me?”

“Because you have anger issues and he’s going to be a walking punching bag. But mainly because I say so.”

Rose nodded as though that made perfect sense. Roy, meanwhile, was beginning to regret getting into this.

As it turned out, he was right to. Rose hit him a lot. Not particularly hard, although he was _definitely_ going to be tender in the morning. But she did it a lot, and she was fast. Even when she took care to telegraph, he still didn’t dodge most of the time.

On the other hand, it wasn’t likely to get him killed, so there was that going for it.

Xander, meanwhile, had almost finished his house of cards. He only had one card left. He looked thoughtfully at the house, then walked about 10 feet away from it. Then he threw the last card at it.

It fluttered harmlessly to the ground a few feet from where he stood. It got nowhere near the house. Xander sighed, but didn’t really seem all that surprised about it. He picked up the card, knocked down the house and went to form a team to deal with the Mayor.

~*~

Oliver’s priorities ran thusly.

The Mayor had a lot of guns and some kind of connection to the local military base, Camp Kirby, which gave him ample access to more. Going by his name, he didn’t seem like the kind of person to just sit quietly on an arsenal like that.

The shady ‘concerned third party’ on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any immediate goals. Felicity hadn’t been able to find out anything about them, either – which wasn’t surprising, given how little he had given her to go on in the first place. They could wait.

So it was that Oliver found himself in the rafters of the building that was, apparently, the Mayor’s headquarters.

The same headquarters that didn’t seem to have a single gun in evidence, although there were several crates that showed that they had been recently.

The same headquarters that were rapidly filling with young women who, of all things, were carrying swords and shields.

The second thing that Oliver wondered was where the Mayor and his men had gone to.

The first thing that he wondered was what he was going to do about the fact that one of the girls had just looked up and seen him.


	6. Chapter Six

To Oliver’s unending surprise, the girl sheathed her sword, waved up at him and called “Hey Ollie! My friend has a crush on you!”

One of the other girls flushed brightly enough that Oliver could see it even from where he was and loudly whispered “Shut up!”

Oliver took care to activate his voice filter before he said “Who are you?”

The girl who had called up at him looked around her theatrically. “Girl Scouts?”

Another girl added “Medieval troop.”

At that point, Oliver strongly suspected that they weren’t taking this seriously. However, given that the Mayor, his men and large quantity of guns weren’t where they were supposed to be, he didn’t have the luxury to be frivolous. If they weren’t here, then chances were that they were going to pop up somewhere else – somewhere that Oliver was fairly certain no one in the city was going to like them popping up.

So he ran towards his ready-made escape route and hoped that none of the Medieval Girl Scouts had found their way onto the roof.

~*~

Xander wasn’t expecting a call. He expected that, in a few hours, Vi and the other Slayers would come wandering in, possibly with popcorn, and regale him with stories. Not stories about how they had dealt with the Mayor and his men, but how they had celebrated afterwards.

If Vi was calling him now, then that meant that something had gone wrong. Xander didn’t like it when things went wrong. It generally didn’t work out well for him.

“Vi, what happened?”

“Well, the Mayor isn’t here, and I’m going to kill Shannon.”

Xander sighed loudly and put a hand to his head. “Vi, could you tell me what happened in a way that makes sense and won't lead to me asking several thousand questions?”

“Not much to say, really. The Hood was there when we got there, lurking in the rafters. Shannon called him Ollie and told him I had a crush on him. Now she’s going to die. Did you have to tell everyone that you thought Oliver Queen was the Hood?”

“Well… yeah, I kind of did. I didn’t mention your crush on him, I swear. Just in case you're planning on adding me to your ‘To Kill’ list.”

Xander very prudently held the phone some distance from his ear so that he was deafened when Vi yelled that she _didn’t_ have a crush on Oliver.

“I’m sure you don’t, but right now isn’t the time to talk about whatever celebrity crush you may or may not have. We need to find the Mayor before he pops up and causes some trouble.”

“Good luck with that. You very cunningly brought loads of Slayers with you and absolutely no one who can cast a decent locator spell.”

“Pfft. I’m going to use my cunning detective skills. Don’t laugh.”

“That wasn’t me, it was… well, okay, it was me. Do you-“

“Sorry, I have to go detect things now. Get here as soon as you can – we’ll be needing you guys to go after the Mayor.”

“Yeah, because I’m sure that you’ll have figured out where he is by the time I get back.”

Xander hung up before his detective skills got impugned even further. “Hey, Roy? Would you mind getting over here for a second?”

Roy came over. He was somewhat relieved about that, although Rose looked rather put out. “What is it?”

“The Mayor isn’t where you said he would be.”

“Really?”

“No, I often lie to people for no good reason.” Xander rolled his eye. “So, if you were a well-armed gang, where would you hide?”

“The Glades.” Roy said instantly.

Xander sat back in his chair. “Yeah, but he was already in the Glades. Plus, from what I’ve seen over there, there isn’t anything going on that would need him to mobilise absolutely everyone. A couple of men would probably do for most things.”

Roy sat down. “Okay. So, if you were the Mayor and all these girls were men with guns, and you wanted to take over the city, where would you go?”

Xander stood up so fast that his chair fell over. “Everyone! Gear up, _now_! We have to go!”

~*~

The man formerly known as Xavier Reed walked calmly into the Town Hall and said to the receptionist “I’d like to see Mayor Altman, please.”

“Do you have an appointment?” she replied without looking up.

A stream of men with guns came pouring in through the door. The man formerly known as Xavier Reed, but now known solely as the Mayor, grinned. “Yes, I think I do. And if anyone even thinks about calling the cops or triggering any alarms, well, then that’s going to be the last thing you think.”

He walked into Altman’s office. To Altman’s credit, when faced with a gang of very well-armed people who definitely looked like they were going to kill him, he didn’t pass out or make a run for it. He just went very pale. “What do you want?”

“Well, _Mister_ Altman, I hear that you hired some kind of private security firm to deal with me and mine. I don’t appreciate that. In fact, I thought I’d come here and tell you in person just how much I don’t appreciate it.” The Mayor took a gun from one his men. “I hear that power comes from the barrel of a gun. Why don’t you tell me who has the power now?”

“Please.” Altman said in a voice so quiet that it was almost inaudible. “Please. Don’t do this.”

The Mayor grinned so widely that it looked as though his face might possibly split in two. “Yeah. That’s the sound of power, alright.”

At that point, three things happened.

The first was that the Mayor pulled the trigger.

The second was that an arrow came flying through the window, knocking the gun out of the Mayor’s hand. This arrow was quickly followed by the Hood.

The third thing that happened was the receptionist came our of nowhere and cannoned into the Mayor’s men, knocking them down, taking their guns and generally causing mayhem.

A few seconds later, the Mayor and his men were on the ground groaning, either because they had been hit by a receptionist with super strength or because they had an arrow in them.

A few seconds after that, the Hood was gone, making a mental note to see if this receptionist was related to the other women who’d claimed to be Girl Scouts, and exactly what they were up to.

The receptionist, meanwhile, was busy calling the police.

And, after a moment’s thought, an ambulance as well. In all the excitement, Altman had been shot.

~*~

“Hey, Anna.” Xander said when he got to the hospital. “What happened?”

Anna, Slayer and occasional receptionist, shrugged. “Bunch of guys turned up with guns.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. We had people to sort them out, but they weren’t where they were supposed to be and we couldn’t get to where they actually were in time.”

Anna shrugged again. “It happens.”

“So, Altman… how is he?”

“He’s fine. One of the bullets skimmed across his ribs, one went in his arm. He’ll be fine. Those guys were really bad shots.”

“Well, you can thank the Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy for that. Although I see that reference means nothing to you, so never mind. It was a good thing you were there.”

“The Hood was there too, you know. Pretty sure he’s the only reason that Altman doesn’t have even more holes in him.”

“Interesting.” Xander adjusted his eyepatch slightly. “I guess I’ll be having a conversation with him before long. But that’s not important. Can you tell me exactly what happened? Giles is going to want a report.”

“Aw, come on! You’ve got me on babysitting duty and you want me to write reports too? No fair!”

“If you tell me, I can write one. I just need the details, Anna.”

Anna waved a hand vaguely. “Not much to say. Mayor showed up, guys with guns showed up, he went to see Altman, said something about hearing that Altman had hired some kind of private security, opened fire. Then the Hood shot the gun out his hands, came bursting through the window and we made short work of the rest of them. I’m sure that Giles will be overjoyed with such a comprehensive report.”

Xander looked at the ceiling as he mentally reran the conversation. “Hold on a second. What did the Mayor say before he shot Altman? I mean the exact words.”

“I don’t know about exact words, but something like ‘I heard you hired some private security to deal with my guys and I don’t like it.’”

“Well, that’s interesting. See, we’ve only been in town a few days, and we’ve been working with Altman for even less than that. He didn’t even mention out involvement in the business with the copycat vigilantes. Barely anyone even knows we’re around. So who would’ve gone to the Mayor and told them about us?”

“Don’t know, but there’s bound to be a few demons or vampires that have noticed we’re here. Maybe one of them told him?”

“That was a rhetorical question, Anna.”

“Oh.”

“Plus it doesn’t make any sense. Demons don’t seem to be up to much over here – I guess earthquake machines put a damper on everyone’s day – and even if they were I doubt they’d tell the Mayor. Anyway, how would they know we were working with Altman?”

“Was that rhetorical again? Because you _know_ that there are psychic demons out there.”

“I’m thinking conspiracy.”

Anna sighed. “Of _course_ you are.”

“Your sarcasm is much appreciated. Anyway, keep an eye on Altman for a bit. I’ll send over another couple of girls too. I have a sneaking suspicion that someone is going to try and kill him.”

“Xander, we’re in a hospital because he got shot. I think it’s pretty obvious that someone wants him dead.”

“Except that… oh, you’re just going to be sarcastic no matter what I say, so I’m going to go and do some sleuthing all by myself.”

“What are you going to do?” Anna said curiously, and very definitely not feeling the need to burst out laughing.

“Well, first of all I’m going to go and see what I can get out of a gang boss, and then I’m going to ask Oliver Queen if he spends his nights pretending to be Robin Hood.”

“Okay.” Anna said with a perfectly straight face. “Good luck with that.”

~*~

“Hi.” Xander said when he got the police station. “I’m from the Mayor’s office. I called earlier about arranging to talk to the leader of the men who tried to kill Mayor Altman earlier.”

The desk sergeant looked at him oddly. “He isn’t here, sir. None of the gang is.”

Xander blinked. “Where are they then? Police cars showed up and everything. If they weren’t taken here, where would they have gone?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have any records of police cars being dispatched to the Town Hall. I can’t help you.”

Xander nodded solemnly. “Thank you, sergeant.”

Yup, definitely a conspiracy.


	7. Chapter Seven

Xander didn’t bring Vi with him when he went to see Oliver. Not because he thought that she would do something strange, like asking for his autograph on her arm – she’d been perfectly cool when she had met him briefly before – but because he was going to be accusing him of being the Hood and he thought that it would probably go better if he did it by himself.

So Xander turned up at Oliver’s office and asked his secretary if he could see the man himself.

“He’s busy. He has a-“

“This won’t take a minute.” Xander moved past her and opened the door.

“Hey! You can’t go in there!” the secretary stood and went after him. 

When the pair entered the room, Oliver stood and said “What’s going on?”

“Hi, sorry to barge in like this, but it’s kind of important.” Xander said quickly. “If you don’t call security, I promise not to tell them what you get up to at night.”

Oliver was a picture of incomprehension. He genuinely looked like he had no idea what Xander was talking about. It was almost enough to make Xander doubt the admittedly shaky idea that he was the Hood. Almost. In fact, he might have discarded it entirely if it wasn’t for the fact that he heard the secretary take a sudden shocked breath behind him.

“It’s okay Felicity. I can handle this.” The secretary – Felicity left. Xander made a mental note to have her followed. Clearly she knew _something_ , and Xander really doubted that she was even close to being able to shake off a Slayer. “Now, would you mind telling me what you’re talking about, Mister…”

“Harris. Xander Harris.” Xander smiled slightly despite himself. “And I think you know exactly what I'm talking about.”

“I am absolutely certain that I don’t.”

“I’m talking about your nightly outings, where you wear a green hood and shoot bad guys.”

Oliver blinked, and then laughed. Xander didn’t know what he had been expecting, but that certainly hadn’t been it. “You’ve been talking to Lance, I see. If you’d done you're research, you’d know that I was already accused of being the Hood. I was cleared when he was seen on the other side of the city while I was under house arrest.”

“Interesting thing about masks, Ollie – can I call you Ollie? See, the thing is, anyone can wear them. Plus, you have calluses on your hands. The kind of calluses that you get from using a bow a lot.”

Oliver looked at his hands as though he had never seen them before. “My sister has several awards for archery herself. You want me to call her in so you can accuse her too?”

“Only if she’s incredibly masculine and has more stubble than any girl should reasonably have.”

“Right.” Oliver said slowly. “And who exactly are you to come in and accuse me like this?”

“Concerned third party.” Xander said calmly, thinking that really he needed to come up with a better description of what he did. “We’re dedicated to making sure that the city stays safe.”

“You seem to be doing a bad job of it. I heard that Mayor Altman got attacked earlier today.”

“Then you’ll also have heard that he’s alive and well. Well, he’s as well as you can be when you’ve been just a little bit shot. But that’s not the point. Take the FEMA trucks, for example. You can be assured that the next one is going to make it to Glades Memorial without any problems.”

Oliver shrugged. “If you say so.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to say that we’re not-“

“Oh, would you look at that.” Xander turned around to see a brunette standing behind him, with Felicity next to her looking apologetic. The brunette looked angry. “You’re playing at being the CEO. You’re having meetings and everything. Now, about you actually start running your business, Mr Queen?”

“Isabel.” Oliver said. He sounded resigned.

“She’s not very nice, is she?” Xander whispered out of the corner of his mouth. He saw Felicity smile and look away. Isabel looked, if it was possible, even angrier.

“Your friend is hilarious.” Isabel said in a voice that made it clear that she thought that nothing was further from the truth. “But we have a meeting scheduled, Mr Queen. I think it’s about time that I - _we_ started bringing my business back from the brink of receivership.”

“Fine.”

Xander took that as his cue to leave. As he did, he glanced back and watched Isabel as she moved to sit across from Oliver.

~*~

“So.” Xander said, sitting down. “I went to see Oliver just now.”

“And you didn’t bring me?” Vi said indignantly. “What happened to me being your deputy?”

“Would you mind waiting until after I’ve finished?”

Vi thought it over. “Kind of.”

“Wonderful.” Xander said acidly. “Anyway, you know how you completely don’t have a crush on Oliver and definitely haven’t been keeping up with the news involving him?”

“Yes?” Vi replied warily. 

“I don’t suppose that you know anything about someone involved with his company called Isabel?”

“Isabel Rochev? Sure, she’s big news in the business world. Really likes gutting businesses. She tried to that to Queen Consolidated, but Oliver managed to get half of the shares so she couldn’t run it into the ground.”

Xander thought about asking how it was that Vi suddenly knew so much about business, but then decided against it. He’d already gotten an earful from her about Oliver before. “I think we need to have someone following her.”

“Why? No, wait, don’t tell me. This is some cunning detective scheme that you’ve come up with, isn’t it?”

“I’ve spent the last year basically surrounded by Slayers everywhere I look. There’s… something about the way that you move. Almost like you’re dancing. I guess it’s all those magical fighting skills that you inevitably seem to pick up. Isabel moved like that. Of course, she might actually _be_ a dancer, but they aren’t generally known for being cutthroat business women.” Xander paused. “At least, not as far as I know.”

“Your reasons for having people followed just get flimsier and flimsier.” Vi pointed out. “I guess you’re going to tell me that you think that Oliver spends time being a secret ballerina as well.”

“Haven’t a clue. In case you haven’t noticed, Slayers are all women. I haven’t spent nearly as much time watching how trained men move.” Xander said, then hurriedly added “Feel free to make that sound less dirty.”

“I’m not sure I can. Still, you're the boss, so if you want to send people on wild goose chases then that’s your choice. I’ll tell Shannon to get on it.”

“No. I want Shannon for something else. Rose too. Get Anna to do it. She’s probably bored silly after sitting in the hospital all day.”

“Ooh, is something interesting to going to happen?”

Xander smiled. “It’s going to be sunset soon, and for some reason FEMA really likes sending trucks out at night without nearly enough guards, even though they’ve been losing them for weeks now. Shannon and Rose are going to put a stop to that, and we are going to watch.”

Vi pouted. “Watching is boring.”

“Welcome to my world, Madam Deputy.”

~*~

“You know, we’d have a much better view if we were on that building.” Vi pointed out.

“Maybe.” Xander said blandly.

“Anyway, how do you know that the truck is even going to come down this way in the first place? Or that the action is going to happen here?”

“This is a choke point. If I was planning an ambush, this is where I’d do it. And was for how I know it’ll be here, Rose called and told me.”

“And how did _she_ know?”

Xander didn’t bother to reply. Nor did he really need to, because at that moment a FEMA truck drove into sight. Entirely unbeknown to the people in the truck, there were two figures lying flat out on the roof. Vi was quite impressed – not that the two Slayers were managing to somehow hold on, but that Rose had managed to make a call while she was up there.

As if on cue, three men on motorbikes came roaring out of a nearby alley. The man driving the truck, who was well aware that this was a dangerous route even though his bosses didn’t seem to think that it warranted extra security, slammed on the brakes and got as low in his seat as he possibly could.

As such, he didn’t see two crossbow bolts come whizzing out of nowhere to hit two of the bikers, knocking them off their bikes. Nor did he see someone somersaulting over the truck and take down the remaining biker with a spectacular flying kick that would almost certainly have broken the ankle of an ordinary human.

However, when there was a distinct lack of gunfire, the driver looked up. Therefore he did see two other people coming out of the alley. One of them was a woman with white hair, and the other was big, muscular man who, to the driver’s surprise, seemed to have claws like Wolverine. He also saw a woman standing facing them, and another smaller woman came sliding down the windshield to stand alongside her.

Xander and Vi watched as the woman with white hair hurled a couple of daggers at Rose, who caught them seemingly without any apparent effort. Rose twirled them absently, and then closed the distance between her and the other woman.

Meanwhile, Shannon and the man with Wolverine claws were having an all-out fight. Contrary to Xander’s general expectation of a fight between an ordinary person and a Slayer, the other man was holding his own.

The fight between Rose and the woman with white hair, however, was brutal and very one-sided. After it was over, Rose turned and watched Shannon’s fight.

The man with claws overextended a strike slightly, allowing Shannon to grab hold of his wrist and twist. The man hunched over, and Shannon kicked him in the chest – at the same time the man slashed her across the front with his other hand. The man collapsed, wheezing, probably with some cracked or broken ribs. Shannon took a step backwards, looked down at herself and then pulled a length of bandage out of a pocket and mutely handed it to Rose, who took it and started dealing with Shannon’s wound.

“So.” Xander said. “What did you see?”

“Shannon was too showy. If there had been more people, they could have killed her after that flying kick. She also tends to reuse the same attacks too much, which makes her predictable. Rose… well, Rose needs to learn how to work in a team better. It’s all very well being a good fighter, but sometimes that’s not enough. Shannon didn’t need to get wounded at all.”

Xander nodded as though he had expected nothing less. “Good. But I’m betting that you didn’t see the man in the green hood who watched the whole thing from the roof of the building that you correctly pointed out would have a better view.”

Vi spun to look at the roof of the building. There was no one there.

“Oh, he’s long gone by now.” Xander said conversationally. “I think our friend Ollie just wanted to see what we were capable of.”

~*~

“Felicity, I need you to find out everything you can about someone called Xander Harris. Now.”

“Right, yes, on it.”


	8. Chapter Eight

If Xander was Oliver Queen, the first thing that he would have done after seeing two women deal more or less effortlessly with more than twice that many armed people would be to research them. Of course, Oliver didn’t know anything about them to use as a starting point, not even their names. He only knew Xander’s. So he’d probably be… trawling databases or whatever you had to do to find information about people. That’s what Xander would be doing.

Well, actually, he’d probably call Willow and ask her to do it for him, but Xander was pretty sure that Oliver wasn’t the kind of person who had easy access to a witch who’d been hacking public records since she was in high school. He’d probably do it himself.

But Xander _did_ have access to a witch who took great pleasure in hacking things.

So the first thing that he did when he got back was call Willow. To his mild surprise, she picked up immediately. “Hey, Will. Can you do me a favour?”

“That depends on what it is.”

“Well, I'm pretty sure that someone is going to be looking for information about me. Probably the rest of us too, if he can. I wanted to make sure that you had some kind of system in place in case a human goes and gets curious.”

“You woke me up to ask me _that_? Seriously, Xan, that was probably the first thing I did once we all got settled after Sunnydale. I even wrote a report telling everyone.”

“Right. I guess that my copy of that must have been eaten by… the report eating monster who lives on my desk.”

“You don’t even have a desk.”

“Right, because it ate that too.”

“It probably got hungry because you were throwing away all of the reports before it could eat them.”

“I admit nothing about my filing habits.”

“I’d be surprised if you admitted to having any in the first place. Xan, if that’s everything, it’s been a long day and I’d like to get back to sleep…”

“Oh! Wait, there’s one more thing. When you whisked me away from Portugal, you didn’t let me take my stuff…”

“So you woke me up to ask me something you should already know and get me to act like a magical FedEx. Thanks for that.” Willow said acidly.

“I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

Willow hung up, and Xander promptly went and sat under a table. Last time he’d asked Willow to send him something, she’d almost brained him with a suitcase. She’d sworn that it had been an accident, but Xander had his doubts.

As time went by and no luggage appeared out of nowhere, Xander became profoundly glad that there was no one around to see him hiding under a table. As more time went by and _still_ no luggage appeared, Xander began to think that maybe Willow had gone back to sleep and had decided to send him his stuff in the morning. He rather cautiously got out from under the table, straightened up… and then took a step sideways at the exact moment that a suitcase materialised above his head. It landed harmlessly next to him.

He made a mental note to thank Willow. She’d actually packed his stuff, rather than sending it loose.

~*~

The next morning, Xander was woken rather earlier than he would have liked by a call from Vi. Fortunately, one of the benefits of having spent years fighting the forces of evil every night was that Xander didn’t need to sleep all that much, and he had plenty of practice with switching from asleep to awake in a very short space of time.

“What’s up, Vi?”

“Anna wants to know if she can stop tailing Rochev now. And the girls watching the Mayor are asking to be relieved.”

“Did Anna… no, wait. Tell her to meet me at Verdant. She can tell me herself. Put someone else on Isabel. Just not Rose. Get her to watch Altman – she needs some time to cool off after last night. Send someone else with her.”

“Verdant? Why are you going there?”

“So I can dazzle Miss Snooty with my amazing card tricks, of course.”

“Of course.” Vi said drily. “I don’t know why I even asked.”

~*~

Anna was waiting for Xander outside Verdant. “You got here early.”

Anna shrugged. “Watching Rochev was unbelievably boring.”

“I was kind of counting on you getting her a little bit later, so you could swoop in and give me an out in case things go pear-shaped in there.”

“Oh, with your amazing card skills I’m sure there’s no chance of that happening.” Anna said innocently.

“Your confidence and your sarcasm is duly noted. So, what happened with Isabel?”

“She worked in her office for a really long time – almost all the other employees were long gone by the time she left. Then she went home and worked some more. Then she slept, then she went back to the office. Dull stuff.”

“Right. That’s good. Hopefully I was wrong.”

“No, don’t say that. You’re never wrong about people secretly being ballerinas.”

Xander sighed. “This would never happen if I had a ridiculous name like Sherlock Holmes.”

~*~

Thea was just ending an interview with a potential new bartender when Xander walked in with a pack of cards in one hand. Upon seeing her, and upon completely disregarding the other person in the room, he fanned out the cards face-up and instructed her in the most theatrical voice that he could manage to “Take a card, any card.”

Thea sighed, wondering what she could have possibly done to deserve this so early, and told the interviewee that she would get back to them. After the interviewee had left, she turned to Xander and said “You know, if you’re going to keep dropping in like this I will get a restraining order against you.”

Xander pouted. “Now, Miss Snooty, don’t be like that. I’m just trying to be friendly.”

“Of course you are.”

“Come on. Pick a card. You won’t regret it, I promise.”

Thea, who had been up all night and was probably not going to be going to bed any time soon, decided that she really couldn’t be bothered to argue. She took a card. It was the three of clubs.

Xander took the card from her, shuffled it into the deck and then put it face down on the table. Thea waited for him to say something, and when it became clear that he wasn’t going to she said “So what happens next?”

Xander grinned widely. “Check your pocket.”

Thea did. Sure enough, there was the three of clubs. She put it down on the table and said “Okay. Well done. I’m impressed. But what-“

“I’m not done yet. Turn over the top card.”

Thea turned over the top card. It was the three of clubs.

So was the next card, and the next. At that point, Thea just flipped over the entire deck. Every single card was the three of clubs. She stared at it as she mentally reran everything that Xander had done, wondering how he could possibly have substituted the packs. He wasn’t even wearing a long-sleeved shirt, so that was out, and she was sure he hadn’t gone near his pockets… “How did you do that?”

Xander’s grin somehow managed to widen even further. “Magic.”

Thea picked up a card and examined it closely. Xander felt rather gratified. He’d shown that trick to a few other people, and when he said that it was magic they instantly lost interest. Saying that loses its impact when people knew that magic really existed. Never mind the fact that Xander didn’t even have enough magic to light a candle, let alone switch an entire pack of cards.

Thea, not seeing anything even remotely out of the ordinary, put down the card. “Okay. I admit. That was a good trick-“

“An _amazing_ trick. One of several, I might add.”

“-but what’s the point? Why did you come barging in here and show me that?”

Xander gestured with a hand, and all of a sudden there were two cards in it. Both of them were the two of hearts. “Two reasons.” He flourished one card, which promptly vanished. For the life of her, Thea couldn’t see where it went. “I like card tricks, and I’m always looking for the chance to show off. I only learnt them recently and you would not believe how jaded the people I work with are.” The second card vanished into the same mysterious place as the first. “The second reason is because this place reminds me of home, and it strikes me that it really wouldn’t be a good idea to antagonise the owner. Miss _Queen_.” Xander didn’t add that he rather strongly suspected her brother of being the Hood, and that keeping tabs on people close to him was probably a good idea.

“So you think you can get on my good side with a fancy magic trick?” Thea said. She had intended to be stern. She _wanted_ to be stern. But Xander was just so goofy, and she really needed something in her life that wasn’t deadly serious, even if it was just a little thing. So despite herself, she finds herself grinning. “You might be right about that.”

Whatever Xander might have said next was interrupted by the arrival of a courier, who asked Xander if he was indeed Xander, and upon finding out that he was handed him a small package. Thea thought that she needed some kind of security to stop people wandering in whenever they felt like it. Xander, meanwhile, was wondering who knew he was here and felt that it was necessary to send him something by courier.

Somewhat tentatively, Xander opened the package.

It was a phone.

“It’s a phone.” Xander said, surprised. He’d thought that it was going to be something stranger, like the head of a demon. Or possibly an arrow, knowing this city.

The phone started ringing. Xander didn’t answer it.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Thea asked after it rang for a few seconds.

“Wasn’t planning on it.” Xander said, not taking his eye off it.

“What do you think’s going to happen? Are you afraid that it’ll explode?”

“You’d be surprised how often that happens.” Xander said mildly. Thea thought about making a sarcastic quip, but then she remembered his eyepatch and the fact that he seemingly ran some kind of private security business and thought better of it.

The phone stopped ringing, and didn’t explode. Xander relaxed slightly, only to tense again when it beeped. Fortunately, the beep didn’t mean that it was going to explode. It just meant that it had received a text message.

Xander thought about not reading it. He also thought about calling Willow and getting her to see if everything was all okay with the phone and it wasn’t in fact a bomb. But in the end, he thought that if it had been going to explode, it would’ve exploded when someone called it, if not when he took it out of the package in the first place. Besides, he was curious.

Although, he had to say that the message on the phone did nothing whatsoever to allay that curiosity.

It was from a blocked number, and it wasn’t signed.

_The botanical garden. One hour._


	9. Chapter Nine

When Xander walked into the garden, he wasn’t instantly ambushed by demons or Robin Hood’s Merry Men. There was, as far as he could see, nothing happening in the garden that was out of the ordinary. He saw people coming in and out. He saw three Slayers sitting on the grass having a picnic consisting of whatever they had been able to put together on such short notice (it looked like juice and store-bought sandwiches).

And he saw Isabel Rochev sitting on a bench.

He thought about turning around and leaving, but she had obviously seen him and besides, he still suspected her of not being everything that she seemed to be. He wasn’t going to walk away now. Especially not with three Slayers watching.

As he drew closer, he saw that Isabel had sat on the far left of the bench, meaning that if he wanted to sit down he would have to twist right round to keep her in his field of vision. He decided to stand instead. He also decided that he was going to be having words with whoever was supposed to be keeping an eye on Isabel – they should have told him that she was the reason he was here.

“So. You’ve had me followed.” Isabel said conversationally. “Just so you know, it would be more civilised just to sit down and talk me.”

“Honestly I’m surprised you noticed. I thought… my people were better than that.”

Isabel shrugged delicately. “It’s not the first time I’ve been followed. After a while, countering corporate espionage tends to give you certain skills.” She looked up at Xander. “Not that you're in that field.”

Xander blinked. “What makes you say that?”

Isabel smiled. “I hear things. I know you’re affiliated with Mayor Altman in some capacity. I know that you’ve had… your people guarding him in the hospital. The police should be perfectly sufficient for that, by the way. I also know that you’ve had me followed by two separate people, both young women – one of whom currently thinks I’m in a board meeting. I’ve even heard rumours that you were involved in stopping a gang from killing Altman outright. You, Mr Harris, are definitely not involved in corporate espionage.”

“Well, you’re really well-informed.” This was not going well. Oliver had managed to shake a Slayer following him, but he was probably the Hood. If Isabel had done it too…

“It’s my job.” Isabel said simply. “People don’t get far if they don’t know what they’re up against. But, despite all of that, I _still_ don’t know why you had _me_ followed. I’m not associated with any gangs. I also don’t know why you wanted to see Queen.”

Okay. Xander got the distinct feeling that telling Isabel that he thought Oliver was the Hood wouldn’t go down well, not if the undisguised vitriol in her voice when she said his name was anything to go by, but given that she already seemed to know… well, almost everything that he wanted to keep hidden, he didn’t see any way out of answering. “We look for threats. We work with the Mayor’s office to find threats to the well-being of the people of this city, after... everything that happened with Merlyn’s earthquake machine. Threats like the Mayor. And Oliver… his company made the machine. His mother is currently on trial because of that. I wanted to see what kind of man he was. See if he might be the kind of person who would trigger an earthquake to help out his family. And then you walked in.” Xander paused, and Isabel took the chance to speak.

“I don’t have a history of destroying the city in my family. I’m not part of a gang, either. So what was it about meeting me for about thirty seconds that made you think that I was enough off a threat that I should be followed?”

Xander sighed. “The way you move. There’s a certain… grace. Almost like you're dancing. I’ve seen people who move like that before, people who are _very_ skilled martial artists. Only martial artists generally don’t end up running Fortune 500 companies. And you appeared out of nowhere, and you essentially stole Queen Consolidated out from under Oliver. So I was curious.”

For the first time, he could see that she was taking him seriously. Before, she’d just been looking at him as though he was a child dressed up in his father’s clothes and playing at being an adult. Not that that was entirely surprising, given that he’d said that she wasn’t very nice in a stage whisper moments after meeting her. Now she was looking at him as though it was possible that he might actually know what he was doing.

He was immensely grateful that he managed to keep his mouth shut for once in his life and not say that talking about how graceful she was wasn’t him flirting with her, because that was a lot more obvious and clumsy.

“When I was nine, before my… before I moved to the States, I went to see the Bolshoi Ballet perform _Giselle_. It was… beautiful. I’d never seen… it made me want to be ballet dancer. When we got to the States, I begged my foster parents to let me have lessons. I was obsessed with it.” She blinked and looked at Xander as though she’d only just remembered that he was there. She smiled bitterly. “Then I realised that ballet was just a little girl’s dream.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Xander said, and then without waiting for an answer, he asked “Why’d you stop? What made you stop dancing?”

Whatever answer that Isabel may or may not have given was cut off by Xander’s phone ringing. It was Vi. Given that she knew where he was, this meant that something had happened. Something bad, most likely.

Still, at least he’d been right about Isabel secretly being a ballerina, so there was that going for him, which was nice.

“Sorry, got to take this.” Xander said. Isabel waved him away. Xander got the impression that not only did she not care, but that she wouldn’t even have bothered to apologise if the situation had been reversed. He moved a little distance away. “Vi, what’s going on?”

“Someone killed Altman.” Vi replied.

Xander closed his eye. “And the girls?”

“Rose got her arm broken, and Sofia’s unconscious. She hasn’t woken yet. Two of the policeman guarding him are dead, and the other’s got two broken ribs.”

“What happened? Do we know who did it?”

“Rose says that he was wearing a mask.” Vi said guardedly.

Xander was about to query how a single person overpowered two Slayers and three policemen when something about Vi’s tone caught his attention. “There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

“Rose says that he was wearing a full-on mask. No eyeholes. Apparently he’s bald. And he’s strong, Xan, as strong as a Slayer. According to Rose, when he came in the cops were dead before they even knew what was happening. He tossed Sofia across the room like a ragdoll. When Rose hit him he barely even staggered. She’s got bruises on her knuckles from where she punched him.”

“Right. So some kind of strong demon, maybe one without a face-“

“He was wearing a clerical collar, Xan.”

Everything stopped. The wind, the voices around him, everything faded away. All that Xander could think about where the words that Vi had just said. “No. He died, Vi. Buffy killed him.”

“Let’s face it, that doesn’t always stop people where we’re concerned.”

“No. You don’t get to joke about that. He died. He got split in half. I don’t care what you say, Vi, he got split in half and then an entire town collapsed on him. People don’t just walk that off.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe-“

“You said he was bald. The guy who killed Altman. Caleb wasn’t bald. And if it was Caleb then he’d be showing his face, bold as brass. It’s someone else, Vi.”

Not wanting to hear anything else, Xander hung up. He turned around to find that Isabel was gone. He found that he simply couldn’t bring himself to wonder when she’d left.

~*~

When Xander turned up at Verdant, he wasn’t thinking tremendously clearly. He’d been thinking about how much he’d like to be at the Bronze, about times when he had two eyes and Anya was still alive and things were simple. Or simpler, at least.

Verdant was as close to the Bronze as he was going to get. The fact that it was the middle of the day, and he’d been there once already that day and Thea probably wouldn’t be all that happy to see him didn’t even register.

He went inside. Thea was sitting on the bar talking to some woman that Xander didn’t recognise. Whatever she was saying, it looked as though Thea really didn’t want to hear about it.

Xander produced a deck of cards. He shuffled them from one hand to other almost absently. When he got to the bar, a card leapt high into the air. Everyone’s eyes followed it instinctively.

When it landed face up on the bar, revealing itself to be the ace of spades, there were four people standing there.

And then there were three, because a man with a mask covering his entire face had picked up, one-handed, the woman Xander didn’t recognize and had casually tossed her aside. She landed on a table, which broke. She didn’t get up.

The man wrapped one hand around Thea’s throat and hoisted her effortlessly into the air. He spoke, and he sounded like a demon. Or, to someone who had more experience with that world, he spoke like someone who was using a voice changer to make themselves sound spooky. “Thea Queen, your mother destroyed this city. The sins of your mother will-“

He didn’t get any further than that, because Xander hit him with a chair. Not that this accomplished much, other than a broken chair. The man didn’t even flinch. He did, however, put down Thea. He also hit Xander so hard and so fast that Xander was wondering why he was lying flat and trying to breathe.

Then, just as the man raised his foot to stomp on Xander, there was a high pitched sound that made Xander’s teeth ache. He felt like the sound might possibly make his head explode. With a great deal of effort, he managed to look up. He saw someone who looked for all the world like the Black Cat hitting the man with a staff. She also seemed to put a couple of daggers in him, which didn’t seem to accomplish anything much.

The arrow that appeared in his back seemed to do a little more. Especially when it exploded. Sadly, Xander passed out before he could see what happened next. Or even mention how much of a fan he was.


	10. Chapter Ten

Xander woke up in a hospital bed. He could tell that immediately, without even having to open his eyes. He’d been in similar situations often enough to know how hospital beds felt.

He opened his eyes. Vi was sitting next to him. She looked like she was asleep which meant that he had probably been there for quite a while. He tried to sit up, but gave up when his chest protested. He looked down. His chest was swaddled in bandages. Either that or someone had tried to turn him into a mummy and had given up halfway through.

He wished he could say that that had never happened before.

“You’re up.” Vi said without opening her eyes.

“Sure looks that way.” Xander agreed. “What happened?”

Vi shrugged and looked at him. “Not sure. You passed out, and the littlest Queen has been talking to the police, and they haven’t let me in to see the other one. I was hoping you’d fill me in.”

Xander rubbed his eye automatically, wincing from the strain. “There was… a man. Bald. Had a mask covering his face. He said he was after Thea – something about the sins of her mother. I hit him with a chair before he finished. Not that that did anything. Then he hit me, and there was this horrible high-pitched wail, and Felicia Hardy showed up and started smacking the bald masked priest guy with a staff. Which did nothing. And then someone shot him with an exploding arrow... I don’t know what happened after that. I feel like I had some kind of comic-based hallucination.”

“There are no bodies at Verdant. Not even one with a hole in its back. So either they all got away, or someone died and got carried away. The police showed up before we could look for any blood or anything, although from what you’re saying there should be plenty of that to go around.”

“Are they okay? Thea and… whoever the other woman was?”

“Laurel Lance, apparently. She’s part of the prosecution team for Thea’s mother, and an old family friend. Which probably means that the meeting was all kinds of awkward even before an evil priest showed up – but you didn’t ask about that. Thea’s fine. Not even bruised, I hear. I don’t know about Lance.”

“Not even bruised?” Xander said thoughtfully. “Hmm.”

“You have your thinking face on. Care to share?”

“Not yet. Need some thought.”

“Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the police are going to want to speak to you at some point. And Thea will probably want to thank you. Oliver’s around too – you might want to thank him for shooting the priest.”

“Yeah, fine, whatever. By the way, the priest isn’t Caleb. Caleb loved talking. No way would he miss the opportunity to say something sociopathic to me. He didn’t even pay any attention to me until I hit him with a chair.” Xander thought about leaning forward to whisper in Vi’s ear, then thought better of it. He settled for saying conspiratorially “I think he’s a killer robot.”

Vi nodded. “Of course you do. Got to say it makes about as much sense as having Caleb brought back to life without his hair though.”

“I know right? Anyway, listen, can you do a background check on someone for me? Or get Willow to do it – just don’t tell her that I’m in hospital, I’ll never live it down. Anyway, can you find out if Isabel really did take ballet lessons?”

Vi blinked. “How did we move from super strong priests to business people doing ballet?”

“Before you called to tell me about Altman, I was talking to Isabel. She was the one in the garden. She said that she used to take ballet lessons, years ago. Came up with some kind of sob story about seeing some kind of ballet in Russia and then wanting to be a dancer herself. I want to know if it’s true.”

Vi nodded solemnly. “So you want me to find out if she actually is a secret ballerina. On it.”

Vi got up to leave. She was about to open the door when someone else got there first. She almost walked right into Oliver. To her credit, she didn’t blush or stumble or stammer. She just said “Oh, sorry.”

Oliver smiled absently and looked over at Xander. “I see you’re awake. Can I speak to you for a moment?”

Xander nodded and Oliver came in and sat down. Xander saw that he had a sheaf of papers under one arm. Vi watched him from the doorway before shaking herself and leaving. “After you came into my office and accused me of being a vigilante, I thought it would probably be a good idea to do a little… digging on you myself.” Oliver handed Xander the papers. “Those are just the highlights.”

Xander took them and made a mental note to thank Willow next time he got a chance.

Oliver smiled faintly. “I was particularly interested in the part where you were banned from several casinos in Vegas after making a fortune. Apparently everyone thought you were cheating but couldn’t figure out how.”

Xander grinned. “I _am_ good with cards.” He should probably get Willow some kind of present, as well.

“I enjoyed hearing about you using that money to fund a fan video staring the undercover adventures of Nick Fury in a boy’s school. With every character played by you. Such a shame that that never saw the light of day.” Oliver said. For the life of him, Xander couldn’t understand how he hadn’t managed to crack up upon hearing that. The only reason that he wasn’t himself was because he was currently so mortified that he thought he might possibly burst into flames. He wondered if Willow had always arranged for that to be what people found if they tried to investigate him, or if she had changed after he had annoyed her last night. It looked like that present was going to be a frog.

Xander nodded and smiled. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Most of the other information is completely contradictory.”

Xander shrugged, regretted it, and said “What can I say, I’ve lived an interesting life.”

“I suppose I should congratulate you. You’ve made it effectively impossible to find anything concrete about you. Of course you’ve also made it impossible for anyone to take you seriously, but then I imagine that what’s you’re going for.”

Xander wondered if he should feel offended or complimented. He went for the latter. It was a fuzzier feeling. “Thank you. I guess your rich playboy image took a lot of work too.”

“What makes you think that I’m not really a rich playboy?”

“Well, the general air of menace since you came in was kind of a big clue. That and the fact that you’re the Hood.”

“I’ve already been cleared of that.”

“Right, because that actually means something. Of course. Anyway, Mister Definitely-Not-The-Hood, I have a favour to ask. Seeing as I helped save your sister and all.”

“I’m told that a woman in black leather did that.”

“I helped too, I’ll have you know. Anyway. When the Mayor and his men got arrested after trying to kill Altman, they just… vanished. Apparently the police have no record of sending any squad cars to the town hall, but I know for a fact that they were there. And seeing as how you're obviously good at finding information-“ Xander brandished the papers “-I thought you might want to look into that.”

“I’m the CEO of a company. The police having some kind of clerical error isn’t really anything to do with me.”

“Of course it isn’t. Because you’re not the Hood.”

Oliver stood to leave. Before he left, Xander said “Oh, by the way. Thanks for shooting the priest.”

Oliver turned and looked at him with a perfectly perplexed expression on his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Xander snorted. “Right, because you’re not the Hood. I keep forgetting.”

After Oliver left, Xander, with some difficulty, managed to get up. He felt like he had some broken or cracked ribs. His chest was probably a mass of bruises. Still, he’d get over it.

He went to find Roy. There was someone who was taking their cosplaying a little too seriously, and he wanted to find out who it was.

And hopefully he could incinerate these papers before Vi saw them.

~*~

Oliver didn’t like mysteries. He’d had enough of them in his life, he felt like he could quite happily do without any more.

But now he seemed to be swamped by them. There was the vigilante in black leather. There was the freakishly strong priest. Thea had said that he hadn’t even flinched when he was hit by a chair. Oliver didn’t even want to think about what caused that. And then there was Xander and his organisation, which he couldn’t find anything about. At first he’d thought that they might be some kind of secret branch of A.R.G.U.S., but a group of people which seemed to consist almost entirely of women of around twenty didn’t really fit in with the policy of a shady spy organisation. And there was no way that they would hire Xander.

And now there was something else. Thea had passed out before she had seen it, thanks to the sonic weapon the other vigilante used, but apparently someone had shot the priest. Someone that Xander assumed was him, which meant that it had been with an arrow.

Except that Oliver had been nowhere near Verdant at the time.

Which meant that there was someone else shooting people with arrows.


	11. Chapter Eleven

When a crime is committed, the question that is asked should always be “Who benefits?”

When Malcolm Merlyn activated his earthquake machine and destroyed half the Glades, he had thought that his crime was benefitting everyone. He thought that the Glades was worthless, and more than that, it was dangerous. People died in there every day. Everyone was corrupt. Merlyn had thought that it would be better to tear it down and start again.

As it turned out, it had benefitted the criminals and the corrupt that he had tried to stop. It had helped people like the Mayor, like the people who had been robbing the FEMA trucks.

And it had helped one Barton Mathis, former inmate at Iron Heights prison, before the earthquake had given him the opportunity to escape.

It certainly had _not_ helped his victim, a young woman who he had suffocated by pouring liquid polymer down her throat.

~*~

“Officer Lance?”

Quentin Lance turned around, hotdog in one hand and car keys in the other. “Who’s asking?”

Apparently, the person who was asking was a man in an eyepatch with a young woman hovering behind him. Xander smiled and said “So, you are him. No one ever says ‘Who’s asking’ if you've found the wrong person. They just say ‘Nope’.”

“Funny.” Quentin said, without a hint of a smile. “Now what do you want?”

“I want to talk to you.” Xander replied. “I hear that you were the man who arrested Oliver Queen for being the vigilante. I want to know why.”

Quentin squinted at him and took a bite of his hotdog. “Seriously though, who’s asking?”

“I’m Xander. I work… _worked_ with Mayor Altman. My company and I look for things that threaten the safety of this city. Oh, and this is Anna.”

“Well, I’ve got to say that you did a good job with Altman.” Quentin said sarcastically. “We lost two men there, and you’re wasting your time looking into Queen.”

“We had people there too.” Xander said peaceably. Anna, however, didn’t look nearly as calm. She looked like she would rather be hitting someone right then, and she didn’t particularly care who it was. “One of them hasn’t woken up yet.”

“I’m sorry.” Quentin said shortly. “I can't tell you about the business with Queen. That’s a police affair.”

Whatever Xander might have said after that was interrupted by a call coming over the radio. Homicide, right around the corner from where he was now. He could walk there in about a minute. He looked at Xander, who was still standing there expectantly, as though he thought that Quentin was going to tell him something. “Go home, kid. I don’t have anything for you.”

Quentin wasn’t particularly surprised when Xander started following him. “Is Laurel Lance your daughter?”

It took a great deal of self-control for Quentin not to stop walking, turn around and punch Xander. “What do you know about my daughter?” He had intended for his voice to be flat and level. It didn’t come across like that. It sounded frosty enough to pass for an artic wind.

“I know she’s out of hospital. A little battered, but she’ll be okay. She’s ready for Moira Queen’s pre-trial thingy, anyway.” Xander paused. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop the attacker.”

“I heard the report, he sounded like a regular jugger-“ Quentin stopped talking and looked at Xander. “You're him, aren’t you? The one who hit him with a chair. I heard he broke your ribs. I didn’t hear anything about an eye injury.”

Xander was about to shrug, but thought better of it. He _did_ have more than a few cracked ribs, after all. “It’s an old injury.” He didn’t mention that he had gotten it last time he’d tangled with a super strong priest.

By this point, they had arrived. Several fellow officers had come together to tell Xander and the girl who was with him that they couldn’t go any further.

And a detective had come out to say exactly the same thing to Quentin.

“What?” Quentin said, nonplussed. “I know I’m not a detective any more, but-“

“Captain’s orders. I’m sorry.”

“Come on Hilton, I was your partner. You can tell me what’s going on.”

Hilton didn’t get a chance to say anything. Anna put a hand on either shoulder and lifted Hilton as though he didn’t weigh anything at all. She gently moved him aside and then gestured for Quentin to go ahead. “After you.”

Quentin looked at her in surprise, but went inside anyway. Captain’s orders be damned, he wasn’t going to be kept out of a crime scene. Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time that the ex-detective had disobeyed orders.

Behind him, Xander thought that now would definitely be good time to shrug. After all, the doctor had said that he could move his shoulders occasionally. “What can you do?”

Still, several officers seemed intent on preventing them from going through. Anna looked at them incredulously. “Really?”

Before she could do anything, though, Xander called out “Come on, Anna. Let’s go. Let the police do their thing. We have other stuff to deal with.”

And so, Quentin went inside and came face to face with the latest victim of Barton Mathis. He knew who had done it instantly. Mathis’ victims were always easy to recognise. He dressed them up like dolls, and left them posed. Quentin was intimately familiar with Mathis’ method.

He had been the detective who had caught him and put him in Iron Heights in the first place.

~*~

Meanwhile, Xander and Anna went back to Magnuson Plaza. Vi greeted them. “Find out anything?”

Xander shook his head. “No. Any news on Sofia?”

Vi shook her head. “Still unconscious. Still, its early days. And if Faith can come out of a coma…”

“Right. And Roy? Has he found out anything about the blonde vigilante?”

“Yes, actually. He talked to… someone he knows, who said that there’s a girl called Sin who might know something.”

“A girl called… Sin?” Xander blinked. “You know, I think I liked it better when we were dealing with demons. It was simpler.”

Vi smiled briefly. “I hear it’s a nickname for Cindy. Anyway, Roy listened to your repeated warnings _not_ to follow up leads, so I gave him the day off to spend with his girlfriend.”

“Okay. By the way, who is his girlfriend? Did we ever find that out?”

Vi looked at him in surprise. “It’s Thea. Didn’t you know?”

Xander frowned. “I didn’t even know who she was until Oliver mentioned he had a sister and I thought I should do a little research before is accuse people of stuff. I’m going to have to start investigating everyone in the city, aren’t I?”

Vi shrugged. “Probably. Still, you wanted the job.”

“Thanks for that. Anyway, I guess it’s time to send some Slayers on a search party.”

“I’ll go.” Someone called out. Vi turned around to see that Rose was standing behind her.

“You have a broken arm, Rose.” Vi said sensibly.

“I’m still a better fighter than you.” Rose said. Xander couldn’t tell if she genuinely believed that or if it was just another instance of Slayer boasting. “Besides, I don’t need both arms to ask someone questions. Especially not just a girl.”

“Rose, I’m not letting you go out with a broken arm. Especially not after that business with Shannon. I doesn’t matter if you're a good fighter if you can't work in a team. You need to learn.” Xander said. “Vi, take Anna and… someone who isn’t Rose, and go ask this Sin some questions. Try not to scare her.”

“Would we do that?” Anna said innocently.

“Well… yes. I’m pretty sure that you weirded out half of the police force just now.”

~*~

To their credit, they did try not to scare Sin. But she ran away as soon as Vi asked her a single question. Michaela, the third Slayer Vi had brought along, went to run after her. She could have caught her – no human can outrun a Slayer for any length of time – but Vi stopped her. She figured that it would be more interesting to see where Sin ran to.

As it turned out, she ran to a clock tower had been damaged in the quake. It looked like someone had started repairing it and had given up halfway through.

All in all, it looked exactly like the kind of place where someone would plan a trap. So the Slayers went in warily.

They were rather surprised when they got to the top of the tower and found absolutely no one there. There was no evidence of Sin, which was strange given that there was only one way up and they had just taken it.

They were also rather surprised when a blonde in black leather dropped out of the rafters and tried to hit Anna over the back of the head with a staff. Anna whirled around and caught it – and was taken completely by surprise when the blonde kneed her in the gut and crashed her elbow into the back of her head when Anna doubled over. Anna fell, dazed. Michaela took a step forward, only to find herself dangling upside-down with a noose around her ankle.

Vi and the blonde circled warily. Vi was careful where she put her feet, keeping an eye out for any traps.

Anna got to her feet behind the blonde and silently crept towards her.

Then a figure dressed all in black with a mask obscuring most of his face came crashing through the window behind her, cannoning into Anna before rolling to his feet and holding a sword to the blonde’s throat.

Presumably he was taken by surprise when Michaela dropped out of the rafters and landed on him. There was a brief scuffle which ended with the sword lying some distance away and Michaela kneeling on the man’s chest pining him arms to his sides.

Vi picked up the sword and turned to face the blonde. “Hello. Nice day, isn’t it? Mind if I ask you a couple of questions? Like _who are you and who the hell is this guy?_ ”

~*~

Quentin was involved in tracking down and recapturing Mathis. Oliver, Thea and Roy were at Moira Queen’s pre-trial hearing, and Vi and the others were busy in the clock tower.

And so there was no one around who could stop a super strong priest from breaking into Queen Consolidated and stealing a centrifuge from the Applied Sciences Division.

The question that should always be asked when a crime is committed is “Who benefits?”


	12. Chapter Twelve

The blonde put her staff down at her feet and stretched out a hand towards Vi, as though she was trying to ward her off. She looked like she was trying to put some distance between herself and the Slayer with the sword, without actually moving. In fact, she looked scared. As scared as you can look from behind a domino mask. “My name is Sara. I am… I was part of a cult. I was, um, recruited out of college. But when I heard that Starling City nearly got destroyed by a madman with an earthquake machine, I came back to see if my family was okay. The cult wasn't pleased about that.” She gestured vaguely at the pinned man behind her. “He was supposed to bring me back.”

Vi continued to point the sword at the other woman. “You’re lying.”

The blonde didn’t look surprised. She looked confused. In fact, she looked the very picture of confusion. “Why would I lie?”

Vi shrugged. The sword didn’t waver in the slightest. “No idea. But you're pretending to be scared. Everything about you is just screaming fear… except for your eyes. You're not looking at the sword. People always look at the weapon. But not you. You’re looking at me, waiting to see if I make a move. And that’s not the kind of thing that a girl who’s been in a cult since college would do. And, by the way, if there was a cult recruiting girls out of college, trust me, we would know about it. So why don’t you try again? Is your name even Sara?”

The blonde straightened. She looked perfectly at home, which was odd, given that there was someone pointing a sword at her and someone standing off to one side ready to tackle her if she made a move. She didn’t seem concerned by any of that. She seemed perfectly at ease.

She also didn’t seem concerned by the scraping sound that was coming from behind Vi. Vi didn’t spin around – instead, she just looked at Anna, who shrugged and said “It’s Sin. I think she was hiding behind some crates.”

“Right.” Vi said. “How about you tell us who you are, and we promise not to drop you off to the police? I'm sure that they'd be interested in another vigilante.”

The blonde looked like she was considering it. “Fine. Just let Sin go. She isn’t part of this.”

“Fine.” Vi said. Sin walked past her, then paused and opened her mouth as though she was going to say something. At a look from the blonde, she shut it again and left. “Now. Your story.”

“My name isn’t really Sara.” The blonde said. Then she whirled around and lashed a kick at Michaela’s head. She managed to duck, but that shifted her weight enough for the man in black to throw her off. Suddenly, he was on his feet with a knife in either hand, and then one of those knives was flying through the air towards Anna. She managed to sway out of the way.

Unfortunately, this put her directly in the path of a kick coming from the opposite direction, which hit her squarely in the ribs. She hunched over instinctively, and only her Slayer reflexes allowed her to block the man’s following lunge. Even then, his knife scraped along her arm. She kicked him, hard, and even though he managed to deflect most of the force, he staggered backwards under the force of it.

At that point the blonde hit him over the back of the head with her staff. He went down, although that might have something to do with the dagger that had suddenly materialised in his back. The staff shot out towards Michaela’s head, who blocked – only to find that the blow had been a feint. She was swept off her feet. The blonde vaulted over her and dove through the window.

Vi ran over to the window. There was no sign of the blonde, even though they were several stories up and it was a straight drop. She wasn’t particularly surprised.

“He’s dead.” Anna said from behind her.

Vi wasn’t surprised by that, either.

~*~

The Queen Consolidated Applied Science Division looked like a mess. The door had been knocked clean off its hinges, presumably by some kind of vehicle. Two men were dead, one with his throat crushed as though someone had grabbed him by his neck and squeezed.

And, apparently, all that had been taken was a centrifuge. Officer Lance was not having a good day. He had been assigned to this case to keep him away from the Mathis, and this looked like it was every bit as messy.

“It looks like a crew. Maybe three or four men-” Lance began saying to Oliver.

“Actually, it was just one.”

Both Lance and Oliver turned around and said, almost in unison, “Who are you?”

It was a young man. He looked confused by the question. “Um, Barry. Barry Allen.” He fumbled around in one of his pockets and bought out a badge. “I’m, uh, a CSI with the Central City police department.”

“What are you doing here?” Lance said. “Last I checked, this was Starling.”

“Well, we’re investigating a case with… similar characteristics, and my captain sent me over. Haven’t you been told I was coming?”

“No.” Oliver said shortly. “What makes you think that it was one man?”

“Um, well, there are cracks leading away from where the centrifuge was. They’re footprints. You know, the kind that you’d get if you’re lifting something heavy. Really heavy. There’s only one set. So, one guy.”

“One really strong guy.” Lance said sceptically. “Next you're going to be telling me that he ripped the door of its hinges all by himself.”

Barry grimaced. “Well, actually…”

“You are, aren’t you? You’re going to tell me that some-“ Lance paused. He remembered a slip of a girl lifting a grown man and putting him aside as though he weighed almost nothing.

“Detective?” Oliver said.

“What? Sorry, I… anyway, it’s Officer now.”

“Of course.”

“I need to see your surveillance footage.” Lance said shortly.

~*~

As it turned out, there was only one man in the footage. One man, with a mask covering his entire face. He tossed the guards around as though they were ragdolls, before calmly tossing crates at the cameras.

It had to be the same person who had killed Altman and had tried to kill Thea. Those were crimes that Lance could understand, even if they were sort of twisted. Altman had been in power when someone decided to collapse half the city, and Thea’s mother had been involved in doing it. But this… a centrifuge had nothing to do with either of those crimes. It didn’t fit.

Of course, neither did a man with super strength. That made about as much sense as… well, Anna lifting Hilton without any kind of effort whatsoever.

Xander had been at Verdant, too, when Thea had been attacked. Got some broken ribs for his trouble. Thea, meanwhile, hadn’t even been bruised.

Almost as though she hadn’t been the real target. But that didn’t make sense, either. The report said that Xander had interrupted the masked man when he had tried to kill Thea. He hadn’t gotten a chance to hurt her. He’d certainly hurt his daughter.

But still. Xander had been there at the same time as the masked man, and at least one of the people who worked for him was far stronger than someone their size should be. It seemed like two much of a coincidence.

It looked like Lance was going to have a word with him.

~*~

This wasn’t as easy as Lance would have hoped. Just about the only thing that Lance knew about Xander was that he was affiliated with the Mayor’s office in some way. And the Mayor’s office wasn’t the most ordered of places at the moment, not after the gang had forced their way in and shot up the place. Not after Altman had been killed.

It took him a while to find out anything, and even then all he could get hold of was a phone number. That seemed to be all that anyone had on him.

So he called it. “Hello?”

“It’s Officer Lance. We need to talk.”

“I thought you’d never ask. You want me to swing down by the station?” Without waiting for an answer, Xander ploughed on. “No, you probably don’t. So, Botanical Gardens, half an hour?”

The line went dead before Lance even had a chance to reply.

~*~

Lance got there early. He wasn’t particularly surprised to find that Xander was already there, sitting on a bench. “Hello, Officer. What made you change your mind?”

Seeing Lance’s confused expression, Xander said “You’re not here to tell me about Oliver being the vigilante, are you.”

“No. Of course not. I'm here to ask you about the break-in at Queen Consolidated.”

“There’s been a break-in at Queen Consolidated?” Xander looked offended that he didn’t know already.

“Yes. It looks like the same masked man who attacked you at Verdant did it.”

“What did he take? Or are you not allowed to tell me that?”

“I’ll be the one asking the questions here.” Lance said, then paused. How exactly do you accuse someone of employing at least one person with super strength? “That girl, Anna. The one who works for you. She’s strong.”

“You could say that.” Xander clearly looked confused. “I’m sorry, I thought there was going to be some questioning happening. What’s Anna got to do with the break-in? You said it was the masked man.”

“It seems as though the masked man is also… _unusually_ strong.”

Comprehension dawned. The comprehension was followed shortly by laughter. “Oh! You want to know if the masked man works for me? You want to know if I got him to break my ribs and kill Altman? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing, it’s bad for my ribs, but do you _know_ how ridiculous you sound?”

“I’m not asking about that. The fact is that you’ve got someone working for you who is unusually strong, and just a few days after you and your people show up someone who is _also_ unusually strong shows up and starts wreaking havoc. There’s something going on here. Then there’s the fact that the masked man had his hand wrapped around Thea’s neck. By all accounts you hitting him with a chair did absolutely nothing. All he had to do was squeeze, and it would have been over. I’ve seen what happens when he squeezes. So why did he put her down and go for you, when you didn’t do a single thing to him?”

The smile dropped from Xander’s face. “You noticed that, then.”

“Yes! There something going on here, something that doesn’t make sense. This is my city, and I _will_ find out what is going on in it.”

“This city…” Xander smiled faintly. “This city is like a house of cards. Merlyn took a swipe at it, with his earthquake machine. But pieces are still standing, still leaning together. Bits of it still work. We’re trying to rebuild it, Officer. We’re trying to make sure that no one else can knock it over. We have nothing to do with the masked man.” Lance snorted, obviously not believing him. “You don’t believe me. That’s fine. You don’t have to. But let me tell you something, Officer…” he leant forward. “I am a difficult man to find. You know that. But I have been to Verdant several times. I've been seen there. If someone was going to kill me, that would be as good a place as any to do it. So, if I were you, Officer, I’d keep a look out. Someone is going to make a play for the mayorship. Someone who made the Mayor and his gang vanish off the face of the earth. Someone with some kind of super strong man on his payroll. So, Officer, if I were you I’d stop asking so many questions. Step back and see who that person might be.”


	13. Chapter Thirteen

When Thea had imagined this, she had thought that she would be sitting behind plate glass speaking through a telephone, probably with several armed guards around to make sure that nothing happened.

But, as she watched her mother being led in, it seemed like that wasn’t the case at all. Apparently she was going to sit on one side of a bench, and Moira was going to sit on the other. Maybe prison didn’t really work like that, or it was only the case for people who had actually been convicted…

Thea was fully aware that she was busy concentrating on just about everything other than the fact that her mother was currently sitting opposite her. It was the first time that she had visited her. She’d flat out refused to do so before, because when your mother admits to being involved in a plot to destroy half the city, including your boyfriend’s house… well that wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that made you want to visit.

And then she had been attacked by some masked priest, simply because she was her mother’s daughter. She had thought, while she was giving her statement, about what her mother had said. About Moira saying that she had only helped Merlyn because he had threatened her and Oliver. And she had thought… what would she do, if a masked priest had held Oliver by the throat and told her that he would only let him go if she did something, something horrible?

“I saw you at the pre-trial.” Moira said. Thea blinked, and realised that she had been sitting in silence for about a minute. “I didn’t think you’d show.” Her voice was carefully neutral.

Thea shrugged awkwardly. “I, um, I guess I realised something.” She paused. “I was angry at you. So, so angry. The way you… I was furious. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see you, I _couldn’t_. The idea of it made me feel physically sick. After everything…” Thea exhaled noisily, carefully not looking at Moira’s face. Whatever expression was on it, she didn’t want to see it. “And then I got attacked, and-“

“What?” Moira interrupted. “You were attacked? When? What happened? Are you okay?”

“You didn’t hear?” Thea said, surprised. She realised, after a moment’s thought, that she shouldn’t be. Her mother was in prison. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if she was out of the loop, especially with the pre-trial. “I’m fine. It’s not important, I'm not hurt. But the thing is, I was attacked because of you. Because I was your daughter. And I thought… what would I do if someone had attacked someone I loved, or… threatened to? What would I do? And then I got it. I realised why you helped Merlyn, why you… I understood.”

Moira was silent for a while. “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth.”

Thea waved that aside, and, for the first time, looked her mother in the face. “It wasn’t your fault. It was Merlyn’s. I get that now.”

Going from Moira's expression, she was far from sure about that, so Thea plunged on. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I was talking to Laurel, before the… before, and she told me that she might be able to get you a plea bargain. Life without parole. Don’t take it.”

Moira smiled thinly. “You were at the pre-trial. The prosecution is pushing for the death penalty.”

“Fight it. You were under duress, you won’t-“

“I don’t think I can convince the jury of that. It took an attempt on your life before you were convinced, and you’re my _daughter_. If I can't even convince you-”

“I don’t care if I was difficult to convince. You are not going to prison without a fight. Even with Merlyn threatening all of us, you still fought back. Even when he was about to collapse the city, you gave the warning that saved… I don’t know how many lives. Now it’s time to save yours.”

“It’s not as easy as that, Thea. There are things… that you don’t want to know. You and Oliver both. They will come out in the trial, Thea, and I don’t want you-“

“Listen to me. I spent the last five months hating you. I’ve only just got you back. I am not going to let you vanish into prison without a fight. I don’t care if you’ve got secrets. We’ll get through them. We got through you being coerced into destroying half the city and killing 503 people.”

Moira looked like she was going to say something, then paused. Eventually she said “You know, and this is going to sound very strange, but I’m glad that you were attacked. I’ve missed you so much.”

“Do you think we’ll get shot if we hug?”

“I think we can risk it.”

~*~

Oliver’s phone rang. “Oliver Queen.”

There was a pause. Then “What happened to your secretary? Isn’t she supposed to answer your phone?”

“She’s busy. And an executive assistant.” Oliver decided not to ask Xander how he had even gotten the number for his office.

“The world of billionaires is a mystery to me.”

“What can I do for you, Mr Harris?”

“Xander, please. I have no intention of calling you Mr Queen, so there’s no need for you to stand on ceremony. And we need to talk about the break-in at your company earlier.”

Oliver sat back in his chair. “Would there be any point in me asking how you knew about that?”

“That depends. How would you react if I told you that I owned some people in the police force, and they told me all of your little problems?”

“I wouldn’t believe you. You asked me to look into the police force.”

“Good. I was just testing you. You passed. Of course, we still need to talk.”

Oliver looked at his desk. Currently he was working his way through roughly a tonne of paperwork which Isabel had insisted that he look at. Felicity was with Barry, trying to find out anything about the person who had seemingly made off with a giant centrifuge all by themselves. They were likely to be a while. He didn’t want to trawl through this paperwork. Not just because it was dull, but because his mind started wandering and, with everything going on at the moment, he didn’t want that.

On the other hand, Oliver Queen did have a reputation for laziness, and Isabel already had such a low opinion of him that he highly doubted that there was anything that he could do to make it worse. Besides, he could pass it off as trying to solve a theft. He was fairly certain that Isabel would disbelieve him, but he could live with that.

“Fine. When and where?”

“I can be in your office as soon as you tell this overzealous security guard to let me through.”

~*~

Oliver sat in his chair. He didn’t say anything. Xander got the strong impression that he should really be steepling his fingers and looking at him over half-moon glasses. Not because Oliver seemed like that kind of person, but because people in sumptuous offices generally did that sort of thing, at least in the movies. But then, Xander didn’t really know anything about the world of billionaires.

Oliver seemed content to wait for Xander to speak. That was fine by him. Talking was one of his strong suits. At least when he wasn’t busy putting both feet in his mouth at the same time. “So. I heard that someone broke in.”

Oliver didn’t confirm or deny that. He didn’t say anything. “We can help, you know. As a demonstration that not only do we not care that you're a vigilante, but we think that it’s kind of cool.”

“It’s a police matter. If you think you can help, you should be talking to them, not me.”

“Yeah, and if you really thought that then you wouldn’t have let me in here to see you.” Xander leant forward. “Let’s cut to the chase here. You’re the vigilante. Something has been stolen from you, stolen by the same man who killed Altman and attacked your sister. We are offering to help. So stop wasting everyone’s time, or so help me, I _will_ draw something obscene on your chin in permanent marker so that the next time you’re out and about in your hood _everyone_ will be able to identify you.”

Oliver smiled faintly. “As it so happens, I am dedicating my resources to helping into helping a CSI identify what he can from the crime scene. Because I am a CEO of a global company, no matter what else you might accuse me of.”

“Fine. That’s a start. What have you found?”

Oliver looked at him. He could tell him absolutely nothing. He knew that he could stop Xander if he tried to carry out his rather infantile threat. But instead, he sat there and thought about a young woman tackling a man on a motorcycle with an impossible flying kick. “The CSI seems to think that a single man knocked down a reinforced door, killed two armed guards with his bare hands and then carried away a centrifuge so heavy that it shouldn’t be possible for a single man to even move, let alone lift.”

Oliver’s voice was carefully bland, giving no hint of what he thought about what Barry had said. Xander, listening to it, wondered “Who’s the CSI?”

He knew he shouldn’t have asked that the moment the words are out of his mouth. He had only asked because, in his experience, the first thing that people thought of was _never_ that a super strong person had done it. There was always a rational explanation, even if the rational explanation had to be incredibly convoluted and usually ended up making less sense. But seeing Oliver’s expression, Xander got the distinct impression that he had fallen into a trap and given something away that he shouldn’t have. The problem was that Xander didn’t have the faintest idea what that might be.

“He’s from Central City. Barry Allen.” Oliver said, carefully watching Xander to see what his reaction to that news was. “Apparently they’ve got a similar case there.”

Xander, for his part, was desperately trying to remember if there were any Slayers operating out of Central City. He hadn’t heard anything, but then he never read any reports, not even the ones that actually got written. He needed to get back and ask Vi. She was a lot more conscientious than he was in that regard. “Hmm. Interesting idea. Hercules robbed you. Maybe he’s trying to go from zero to hero?”

“Maybe so.” Oliver said noncommittally. “Anyway, if you do think you can help, feel free to let the police know.”

Xander stood. “You know, sooner or later we’ll catch you out there doing vigilante stuff.”

~*~

“Vi, do we have anyone in Central City at the moment?”

“You mean like a branch or what?”

Xander rolled his eye. “You know the stuff that we do here? Do we have someone doing that kind of stuff over there?”

“I don’t think we have anyone doing amazing card tricks there.” Vi said, grinning. She cut off Xander’s acidic response by adding “Seems fairly quiet over there on the whole demonic front, so we don’t have a base there. That said, a couple of the more science-y Slayers are trickling in.”

Xander looked thoroughly nonplussed. “Why would science-y Slayers be going to Central City?”

“S.T.A.R. Labs.” Vi said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. Seeing that comprehension did no dawn on Xander’s face, she added “You know, the particle accelerator?”

“Isn’t that in Switzerland? I'm sure I remember Willow mentioning something like that in Switzerland…”

“Xan, do you even watch the news? This is supposed to be the most significant advancement in scientific history since… something or other. The light bulb, I think. It’s been in the news for months.”

“I was in-“

“It was in European news too.”

“Fine. Whatever. No Slayers but a lot of science. Got it.”

“Why did you want to know?”

“There’s a CSI from there who came to the stunning conclusion that the man who robbed Queen Consolidated had super strength.”

“Uh… didn’t he? I thought we’d already established that.”

“Yeah, but people don’t normally get straight there. They need to have a little girl dangle them out of a window with their pinkie first.”

Vi smirked. “I’m guessing you’re talking from experience?”

Xander shrugged. “I admit nothing. Anyway, I was going to ask Will if she would do some digging, find out why Barry Allen thinks that there’s a super-powered thief lurking somewhere in this city. And what’s going on in Central that’s similar.”

“I can look if you like. Shouldn’t be hard.”

“Hacking into police files? I wouldn’t want to corrupt you.” Xander said piously, and then burst out laughing.

~*~

As it turned out, there were no similar cases in Central City. Barry hadn’t even been authorised to come to Starling. But that wasn’t the most interesting thing. Nor was the most interesting thing that Barry had a history of getting involved in odd cases, the sort of thing that generally involved things that go bump in the night.

No. The most interesting thing was that his mother had been murdered when he had been a child. His father had been convicted and was currently serving a life sentence. Barry, however, had insisted that his father hadn’t done it – he’d insisted that it had actually been a red and yellow streak which had moved too fast for him to see properly. A book which, apparently, had a person in it.

Xander knew precisely one person who could move faster than the eye could see. Someone with blonde hair and a penchant for red dresses.

Xander didn’t have even the faintest of ideas as to why Glory had killed Barry’s mother, but Barry had been spending his life looking into weird cases, obviously in an attempt to answer that exact question. If he wasn’t careful, it would end up getting him killed.

That is, unless someone told him about the supernatural, told him what to look for and what to avoid.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

Xander knew that the best thing to do with this information was to go directly to Barry. Not to threaten him with it, but just to… well, hold it menacingly over his head in order to get him to come with him, so that Xander had a chance to tell him about demons and the Hell Goddess that had probably killed his mother. 

The problem with that was that he didn’t know where Barry was, and if he just wandered into the police station looking for him then Lance would probably wonder how someone who he was already suspicious of had managed to get hold of this information and what Xander wanted to use it for. He didn’t need the police to be suspicious of him – he’d been down that route before and it never ended well.

So instead he printed off the information, leaving out the part about Barry’s parents, and took it to Oliver. He seemed like the person most likely to tell him where Barry actually was.

It wasn’t until he was in the elevator heading up to Oliver’s office that he changed his mind. Instead, he got off the elevator one floor earlier, and thanked the overzealous security guard he had encountered earlier for forcing himself out here. Him and the fact that everyone in Queen Consolidated seemed to have offices made largely out of glass.

Because sitting in the office in front of him was Isabel Rochev, with nothing but a secr- an _executive assistant_ stopping Xander from walking in. Xander got the distinct impression that this might not end well, but after Oliver had seemingly gotten the upper hand in their last meeting it seemed as though Xander needed to do _something_ to throw the other man off balance. Going to someone who owned half his company and seemed to despise the very ground he walked on seemed like a good way to do that.

“Hi.” Xander said to the assistant. “I have some papers for Ms Rochev.”

“Leave them here.” The assistant didn’t even look up. 

“Um, Ms Rochev said she wanted them delivered to her personally. My boss will have my head if I leave them with you… and I don’t want to get on her bad side either.” Xander tried for an ingratiating smile, but when the assistant looked up he was absolutely certain that the only thing she saw was his eyepatch. Still, it disconcerted her enough that she let him through, so there was that going for him, which was nice.

Despite the fact that Isabel didn’t look up when he went in, and indeed didn’t seem to even notice the door opening, she nevertheless greeted Xander with “What can I do for you, Mr Harris?”

“I guess you’ve heard about the break-in at your science division earlier. Of course you have, what with it being your company and all.”

“Of course I have.” Isabel replied, still not looking up. “But that’s none of your concern. We’re handling the matter in-house.”

“I’m sure you are. Still, I have some… information on the CSI working your case. The one from Central City. Some information that you might want to have a look at.”

For the first time, Isabel deigned to look at him. “What kind of information?”

“The kind that I’d be perfectly happy to hand over to you the moment when you tell me where he is.”

“Why do you want to know?” Isabel smiled wryly. “Ah, don’t tell me. He moves like a dancer, and so of course you want to interrogate him.”

“Huh. You do have a sense of humour. Who would have thought? But that’s none of your concern.” Xander grinned as he parroted her words back at her. “All you need to know is that I need to talk to him, and you're not going to get this information until I do.”

“You should be aware that any information that you have, I can find. I am not exactly without resources myself.”

“For all you know, this information could be urgent. Are you sure that you really want to wait?”

Isabel frowned, and Xander knew that he had her. He held out the file, just slightly out of reach. “Come on. You know you want it.”

“Fine.” Isabel said, exasperated. “He’s in one of our labs downstairs.” She told him exactly where.

“Thank you.” Xander handed her the file and turned to leave. He paused at the doorway, turned back and said “By the way, do you want your phone back? The one you couriered to me?”

“Hmm?” Isabel was already flicking through the file. “Oh. You can keep it.”

~*~

Xander’s entrance was greeted with an explosion of laughter. He looked down instinctively to check that he hadn’t left his flies undone or accidentally left his trousers at home. Seeing that he hadn’t, he realised that neither Barry nor Felicity had heard him come in. Adopting his best Snyder voice, Xander said “Would you like to share with the class?”

Felicity whirled around with her hands over her mouth, looking for all the world like a schoolgirl being caught doing something she shouldn’t. Barry, meanwhile, just looked mildly sheepish. “Just a bad chemistry joke. I didn’t think it was all that funny.” He paused, looked at Felicity, and added “Anyway, all the good jokes Argon.”

Felicity giggled nervously. Xander looked thoroughly nonplussed. “Right… well, if you’re done with your stand-up routine, Barry, would you mind if I have a word with you?”

“What about?” Barry said guardedly. He wasn’t suspicious, not yet – if Xander was here, chances were that he permission, but it suspicion was definitely on the horizon.

“The similar case from Central City.”

“Or the lack thereof.” Said a voice behind him. Xander didn’t need to turn around to know that it was Isabel. Xander sighed. He would have been better off going to Oliver. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out? You think that you can come into my company and investigate a crime on false pretences, and I wouldn’t find out about it?”

Xander looked at her in surprise. If he had been her, the first thing he would have done would have been to lay the blame for finding out about Barry’s lie squarely on him, just to sabotage whatever he wanted Barry for.

Barry looked confused. “I’m sorry, who are you? I thought this was Mr Queen’s company.”

Isabel waved the statement away as though it had no consequence. “Barely. But there is no ‘similar case’. Your captain hasn’t authorised you coming over here – in fact, he doesn’t even know you’re here at all. You’re lucky I’m not prosecuting.”

“Prosecuting who?” Oliver said as he walked into the room. Xander looked at the doorway, half expecting the masked priest to come in and join the debate.

“Were you aware that Mr Allen here is outside his jurisdiction, and lied in order to get access to the case details?” Isabel said in a tone that suggested that not only did she think that Oliver knew, but that she suspected that he had arranged for Barry to come there in the first place. Xander made a note not to get on her bad side.

“No, I wasn’t.” Oliver said blandly. He looked at Xander, clearly suspecting that this new information was down to him. Xander fought the urge to shrug.

“It’s bad enough that this company is associated with someone who collapsed half the city and killed more than 500 people and had a break-in, but having someone illegally investigating a case? That’s too much, Oliver, even for you.” Isabel said. “Allen, get out. Be glad I don’t press charges.”

Barry looked like he was going to protest, but upon seeing Isabel’s expression he thought better of it. Oliver caught his arm before he left and said “Did you find anything out?”

“Sugar. The thief left traces of sugar. Feli- uh, Ms Smoak was just looking into anywhere nearby where someone might pick up trace amounts of sugar.”

“Good. Thank you.” Oliver extended a hand for Barry to shake. “I’m sorry about my partner. She’s a little… fierce.”

Barry left, and Xander, who had been watching the exchange carefully, followed after him. He didn’t feel the need to stick around and listen to Isabel yelling at Oliver. “Hey, Barry? Mind if I have that word now?”

“Listen, whoever you are, I need to get back home. If she spoke to my captain, I could be in big trouble. I could lose my job.” Barry said despondently.

“I’m Xander. And this won’t take long. I promise.” Seeing that Barry wasn’t convinced, he added “I have some information about those… oddball cases you keep looking into.”

Barry looked at him in surprise, and then his eyes narrowed. “You’re not with Queen Consolidated, are you?”

“Nope. Concerned third party. Anyway, just give me a little time. I promise that you’ll regret it at least a few times.”

“That’s… not even slightly encouraging.”

Xander grinned. “I know. But aren’t you even slightly curious?”

Barry paused, then smiled sheepishly. “I guess I can spare a little time.”

~*~

A few minutes later, Barry and Xander were sitting outside a café. Xander absently drummed his fingers on the table as he wondered where to begin. “Okay. This is going to sound… strange. Very strange. But bear with me. Don’t walk out me before I'm done. I promise that it will be worth your while.”

“You know, I don’t have the faintest idea who you are, what you do, or why you’re talking to me, right?”

“Yep.”

“Just so we’re clear.”

“So. Anyway.” Xander took a deep breath. “A few years ago, I met a woman. Not your average woman. She was strong. Strong like you wouldn’t believe. You think someone who can knock down a reinforced door with their bare hands is strong? You should have seen what this woman was capable of. She knocked down a ma… a wall like it wasn’t even there. And fast? She was a blur. But just looking at her, you’d just think that she was a little blonde woman in a red dress.”

Barry waited for Xander to go on, but it quickly became clear that Xander was expecting him to say something. “Okay. What’s your point? I don’t suppose you have any proof?”

“Not of that particular person. Other things, yes, but not that.” Xander leant forward. “The point is, those crimes you like investigating? Not carried out by humans.”

Barry would have looked sceptical. He would have liked to. But the fact was, someone had knocked down a reinforced door with their bare hands, and his mother had been killed by someone moving so fast that he that they had been little more than a blur. “So what were they?”

“Aliens.” Xander said conspiratorially.

“Aliens?”

“Yup.”

“ _Aliens?_ ”

“Check your pockets, Barry.”

Barry did so. His expression quickly changed from the incredulous to the confused, as he brought out a small device that he had never seen before. Xander took it from him, held it close to his mouth and said “And that, Oliver, is all you’re getting.” He dropped the device into his coffee, and then for good measure fished it out again and crushed it beneath his shoe.

“So, you weren’t serious about the aliens?” Barry asked, confused.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Barry. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as aliens.”

“Oh.”

“They’re clearly demons.”


	15. Chapter Fifteen

For his efforts, Xander got a mouthful of coffee spewed all over him. He dabbed at it with a napkin, feeling glad that he was wearing a dark shirt. “Demons?” Barry asked incredulously. His eyes narrowed. “Wait. Are you going to pull out some other device? Or is this going to turn out to be a joke?”

“Well… no. I’m being perfectly serious. Although I’m glad that you think that my sense of humour is up to the task of convincing you that demons are real. With a comedic appreciation like that, you’ll go far.”

Barry blinked. “So. Demons. Convince me.”

Xander grinned. He loved explaining the supernatural to scientists. They were always sceptical, but at least they were willing to listen to proof. On the other hand, it meant that he couldn’t use the monstrously outdated ‘the world is older than you know’ speech, which the Council had been using for centuries. “Come with me.”

As they walked, Xander said “Humans aren’t the only sentient life on Earth. There are… others, others that have been here at least as long as humans. Vampires, demons, werewolves… things like that. They try to keep themselves hidden, mostly, but sometimes they aren’t quite so careful about it. Those crimes that you like looking into, the weird ones? Supernatural.”

Barry, to his credit, seemed to take this in his stride. “And you? What do you do? No, wait, let me guess. You work for the Van Helsing Corporation.”

Xander laughed. “Something like that. I’ll explain in- ah. Here we are.”

It was a wine dealer. A perfectly ordinary looking wine dealer. There was absolutely nothing that seemed supernatural. Barry wouldn’t have thought about it twice if he passed it on the street. Now that he was being led inside by someone who may or may not be telling the truth about there being a whole hidden supernatural world, he as looking at everything.

There wasn’t a lot to see. Or, at least there wasn’t a lot to see that wasn’t wine. There was, however, a man waiting behind the counter. If he wasn’t human, then Barry couldn’t tell. “Ah, Mr Harris. Come to see the cellar again?”

“Of course. Thanks again, Bill.”

“No, thank _you_.”

Xander led Barry into the back and then down a flight of steps. “Bill wanted to expand his wine cellar, but he, um, found a little more than he expected. Now, Barry… don’t touch the walls. I am serious about this. Don’t touch them. Don’t even think about touching them.”

They came to a steel door. Lying next to it was a long, thin pipe which had been flattened at one end. Xander picked it up and opened the door, revealing a small room.

The walls were covered in some kind of pinkish crystal. There were no light bulbs in the room, and there was no need of them. The crystals pulsed gently, giving off their own light. They were faintly hypnotic – despite himself, Barry found himself reaching out to touch them…

There was a clang, and Barry whirled around to find that Xander had wedged the pipe under the door, keeping it open. The same crystals covered the back of the door. “What is it?” Barry asked.

Xander just grinned, and pointed up at the ceiling. Barry looked up.

On the ceiling was a jellyfish. At least, he thought it was a jellyfish. It certainly looked like a jellyfish, except that it seemed to be using its tentacles to walk on the ceiling, and there was no water to be seen. It was also pulsing with the same pinkish light as the crystals on the walls.

“We’re not quite sure what they are. We know there aren’t many of them. We know that it makes the crystals, and will only go where they are. We know that if anything organic touches a crystal, then it will come flying at it and eat it, and then spew crystals everywhere. We also know that if you take a crystal out of the room, then it will wait a few hours and… well, get it back. But otherwise, they just walk around like that. They don’t seem to need to breathe - I think this one was walled up here ages ago until Bill hired some men to knock the wall in. Thankfully we heard about it and no one got hurt.”

“And it’s a demon.” Barry said, staring at it.

Xander nodded. “And it’s a demon.”

Barry looked at him. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

“Because I think you can help us. Sooner or later, we’re going to catch the man who broke into Queen Consolidated and we’re going to put him in here, because not even super strength will help you here, and I think that you might be able to help with that.” Xander didn’t add that he thought that he knew who had killed Barry’s mother. Now wasn’t the time. “Anyway, how would you like to come with me and meet the rest of the Van Helsing Corporation?”

Barry didn’t answer. He just looked back up at the jellyfish as it continued its slow dance across the ceiling. He didn’t need to answer. Xander could tell that he was hooked.

“So, we’re not really Van Helsing Corporation. We’re actually…”

~*~

“Hey, everyone. This is Barry. Say hi.”

“Hi.” The Slayers called. One of them near the back added “Xan, why do you have coffee on your shirt?”

Xander mumbled something under his breath which sounded suspiciously like “Damn super sight”. Then, louder, he said “Rose, Lizzie, can I talk to you for a moment?” Barry watched as two young woman left the group. One of them had an arm in a sling. Despite everything that Xander had said, despite seeing the jellyfish demon, he still couldn’t quite believe that these girls were everything that Xander had said. “Rose, how’s the arm?”

Rose shrugged. “It’s fine. It’ll be better by tomorrow.”

Xander blinked. That was fast, even by Slayer standards. “Good. How do you feel about being terrorised by Barry here?”

Rose looked at him. Despite the fact that he was probably more than a foot taller than her and she seemed to have a broken arm, she seemed to completely dismiss the possibility that there was any chance of Barry being able to threaten her. She shrugged again. “Sure, why not?”

“Hold on.” Barry held up his hands. “Why am I supposed to be terrorizing her?”

“Because somewhere out there is a vigilante who happens to show up to help damsels in distress. Rose looks the part. Plus I stand out too much, and Roy… she’s met Roy. Sort of. You might have noticed that we’re kind of short on men around here.” Xander ignored the wolf whistle. Barry decided not to ask who Roy was.

“And me?” Lizzie asked. “What do you want me to do?”

“Follow them. Keep out of sight until the Black Cat shows up. Then take her down. Carefully. She’s dangerous. Yes, even for Slayers. Take her alive. I want to have a word with her.”

“On it, boss.”

Barry followed them out, too dazed to wonder why there were trying to capture a Marvel character.

~*~

Barry was bad at acting like a bad guy. Very bad. To be fair, Rose was also bad at acting like she was even slightly scared of him. Lizzie, from her hidden vantage point on a nearby rooftop, contemplated filming the whole thing and showing it to the other Slayers, but decided against it. Rose would probably beat her up, broken arm or no.

After going through the act in five times in five different places, there was no sign of the Black Cat.

Then, suddenly, on the sixth attempt, there she was. She dropped down from a fire escape and landed in front of Barry, staff already swinging towards him.

She missed completely, as Barry vanished in a red blur.

She recovered enough to turn around and face Rose, but that was about as far as she got. A couple of seconds later, she was on the ground, unconscious.

~*~

Meanwhile, the Slayers at Magnuson Plaza all went silent and stopped what they were doing.

This was because Oliver Queen had just walked in.

“Ollie. What a surprise.” Xander said flatly. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to talk to you.”

“And how, exactly, did you know that I was here to talk to?”

“I bugged Barry.”

“I noticed. I also destroyed the bug.”

“If I learned anything as a businessman, it's redundancy.” Oliver said, a faint smile playing around his lips. “There was more than one bug.”

“Of course there was.” Which meant that Oliver had heard everything. Fantastic. That was just what he needed. “So, you just felt like dropping in and having a chat?”

“Not exactly.” Oliver paused. “You offered to help me before. Does that offer still stand?”

“It does.” Xander replied. Although he couldn’t help but wonder why Oliver would come to them for help now, given everything that he had heard. “What do you need?”

“We’ve found out where the thief took the centrifuge. An abandoned sugar factory. Now, normally I’d go to the police with this-“ Oliver politely ignored Xander’s incredulous snort “-but I get the feeling that this is something that would be better for someone of your… _skillset_ to handle.” He handed Xander a slip of paper with an address on it.

“I see. And can we expect the Hood to join us?” Xander said acidly.

“I wouldn’t know.” Oliver said innocently. “The vigilante doesn’t exactly give me his schedule.”

“Of course he doesn’t. He’s got a secretary – sorry, _executive assistant_ to do that for him.”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Well, in any case, we’ll make a move at sunset. That way the Hood can keep to the shadows.” Xander said. “Goodbye, Mr Queen. We appreciate your custom. Please come again.”

Oliver left. Vi asked “We’re not really waiting for sunset, are we?”

“Of course not.”

~*~

About half an hour later, an abandoned sugar factory was raided by a group of heavily armed Slayers. They found absolutely nothing. There was no sign that anyone had been there recently, besides a suspicious lack of dust. So they left.

They went back, and Xander listened to Rose’s report on what had happened, and made a note to ask Giles to check whether Glory really was dead. He settled down to wait for the Black Cat to wake up. He watched the news, and saw a speech by a man named Sebastian Blood, who said that he was going to run for Mayor and fix the city. He made jokes about how someone called Blood was obviously evil, and he made a note to look into two police officers that stood on either side of him as he gave his speech. One or both of them might be involved in the Mayor falling off the face of the Earth. He kept watching the news, and saw the particle accelerator at S.T.A.R. Labs explode. He made frantic calls to see if Willow and the other Slayers who had made their way to Central City were okay, and upon finding out that they were he gave a sigh of relief.

But at the back of his mind, he watched the Slayers, the Slayers that he had worked with before, the Slayers he had chosen himself to come here. He watched them, and he wondered which of them had told the priest in the mask they were coming. He wondered who had given them enough warning to get out.

He wondered which one of them was the traitor.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

Sara woke up. She didn’t open her eyes or give any outward indication that she had – the realisation that her hands and legs were bound to a chair suggested to her that feigning continued unconsciousness might be a good idea. So she sat there, hair obscuring her face, and listened.

She could hear muffled thumping, heaving breathing, occasional grunts. It sounded like she was in some kind of dojo, which didn’t make a great deal of sense because dojos weren’t exactly known for holding captives.

Then, right in front of her, a male voice said “Ah, she’s awake.”

The effect of this was somewhat undercut by the fact that a different voice, female, added “You’ve been saying that about every ten seconds or so. What makes you so sure that she finally is?”

“Because she went all tense. Seriously, didn’t you notice?” Then, apparently to her, the man added “We know you’re awake. Just so you know, we thought about throwing a bucket of water on you to wake you up, but we thought that seeing as how you're already dressed in skin tight black leather, making you soaking wet as well might be a bit much.”

Sara felt that there wasn’t much point pretending to still be unconscious anymore, so she tilted her head back and opened her eyes. She had planned on asking who they were, but upon seeing the owner of the female voice she didn’t need to. “You. You were at the clock tower. Who _are_ you?”

“We’ll be asking the-“ the redhead began, before getting cut off by the eyepatch-wearing man sitting next to her.

“This is Vi. I’m Xander. And you are?” Xander said peaceably, before adding “You’re surprised? You were expecting, what, us to torture you? We aren’t that kind of people.”

Sara didn’t reply.

“Give us a name. It doesn’t have to even be your real name, although that would be nice. I'd rather not have to call you the girl in bondage gear all the time. People might get confused. And I’d rather not call you Felicia.”

Sara noticed Vi’s expression, which clearly said that she was wondering what Xander was doing. “Sara.” She’d already said admitted to that in the clock tower, and then dismissed it again. She doubted that either of them would believe that it was her real name. Indeed, going by Vi’s snort, she definitely didn’t.

“Okay then, Sara. I have a few questions.” Xander said. “You don’t have to answer them, although it would be nice if you did. We’ll let you go afterwards.”

“Xan-“

“She saved my life, Vi. She’s one of the good guys. Hopefully by the end of this she’ll have figured out that we are too.” Xander turned to Sara again and grinned. “Notice how I carefully didn’t come out and say flat out that we’re the good guys and expect you to take it on faith.”

“Who are you, then?” Sara said, not really expecting an answer. She had to admit, though, this was the by far the politest interrogation she had ever been involved in.

“We’ll get around to that. Now, that man in the clock tower, the one who looked like something out of Assassin’s Creed. Who was he? He wasn’t after us. He wanted you for something. That’s why you killed him. So who was he? Who does he work for?”

“Not someone that you want to mess with.”

“We took care of him just fine.” Vi interjected. “And we managed to get you here without any problems.”

“Okay, then. Next-“ Xander begun, but he was cut off by a sudden outburst of thunderous applause and ecstatic whoops. Looking past her, both Vi and Xander stood up and joined in. “Go on, Vi. Say hi. I’ve got things covered over here.”

Vi looked reluctant for a second, but she promptly left Sara’s field of vision. Xander sat down again. “A few days ago, one of our… people got injured trying to stop someone from killing Mayor Altman. She’s been unconscious since then. Well, until now. She just walked in.”

“Who are you?” Sara said again. “Your… people. The one’s I’ve seen all seem to be young women.”

“Yeah. You can see why your story about being recruited to a cult straight out of college doesn’t quite hold water.” Xander paused. “As to who we are… we are the people who can help you. We can stop those people, whoever they are, from hurting you. Whatever you’re after, whatever your reason for being in Starling is, we can help you.”

“No.” Sara said simply. “You can’t.”

“I’ve seen you fight. People don’t fight the way you do without training, training _hard._ Most of the girls here would be proud to fight half as well as you do.” Xander sighed. “I know a girl. Little blonde girl. She fights like you do. She trained nearly every night for years, and fought for her life regularly. These girls… they’re good girls, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t have that kind of fire. They don’t train that hard because they don’t _need_ to train that hard. They’ve got people by their side. They aren’t alone. But you… just tell me who they are, Sara. We can stop them. We stop the things that go bump in the night. It’s what we do.”

“You can’t, they’re too powerful.” Sara said. “If I really don’t have to answer these questions, then that’s all that I'm going to say.”

“Relax, we’re not going to torture you. You’re only tied up so that you don’t try some kind of crazy ninja escape. And it’s not like being tied up doesn’t match your outfit anyway.” Xander said with a smile. “Anyway, next question. The night you saved my life, at Verdant. What happened? You're not dead – I'm pretty sure that you're not even injured – and the priest was well enough to break into Queen Consolidated the day after, so what happened? Why isn’t one or both of you dead?”

Sara hesitated before answering. She didn’t know who these people were. She highly doubted they were A.R.G.U.S. because they were too young and too unprofessional to be spies. She didn’t know what they knew, so she didn’t know how much to volunteer. In the end, she settled for saying “When the archer shot him with an exploding arrow, I guess he figured that the fight was a little bit too much for him. He got out of there, fast. I didn’t follow him. I checked to see if… you and the other two were okay first. By then he was long gone. The archer too.”

Xander frowned. That didn’t tally with what he knew of the situation. If Oliver was the Hood, and he strongly suspected that he was, then there was absolutely no way that he would let a completely random person in bondage gear check on his sister. He would definitely have gone down there and seen to her himself, probably after some sort of confrontation with Sara. Which meant three things. Either Oliver wasn’t the Hood, which made no sense because he had shown up to watch them stop the attacks on the FEMA trucks. Or it hadn’t been Oliver at Verdant, which would mean by some incredible coincidence that there were two vigilantes who both thought that they were Robin Hood.

No, the most likely scenario was that Oliver knew Sara. Maybe he’d called her in after the city collapsed, because he needed back up. Maybe he met her in Vigilante School. In any case, it would explain why he trusted Sara enough to check on Thea. Maybe he had gone after the priest himself.

Xander decided not to ask her about that. He got the distinct impression that Sara wouldn’t admit to anything, and after having spent days of listening to Oliver flat out denying that he was the Hood, Xander found that he didn’t want to listen to more denials. So instead, he said “One more thing. Later today, we’re going to try something that might possibly lead to the priest. We already know that he’s dangerous, and I’ll take any advantage I can get. I know that your vigilante hero agenda doesn’t exactly match up with his. Chances are you’ll cross paths again. So. We could use your help, taking him down for good. Those sonic thingies you used last time could be a real help, and I'm always up for having more fighters.”

Xander didn’t know what reaction he expected from Sara. He suspected that the most likely would be her to refuse, but there was a tiny chance that she would see the tiny grain of sense in what he was saying and overcome her perfectly natural distrust towards people who had tied her up. He did _not_ expect her to say “What was stolen from QC?”

“Centrifuge.” Xander said, wondering how that could possibly be relevant to anything.

Apparently, though, it was. “I’m in.”

Xander grinned. “Fantastic! Now all we need is for Roy to egg some police cars.”

~*~

Roy had done some pretty stupid things in his time. He would probably be the second to admit that, right after Thea. Of course, Thea would probably admit it in such great detail that Roy’s own admission wouldn’t be particularly useful, but it would still be an admission.

However, he had never done anything quite as stupid as throwing eggs a police car in broad daylight, while the policeman in question was sitting in his car, with dozens of witnesses everywhere. All because Xander had a hunch that he might be dirty.

On the other hand, it was oddly satisfying, and if there was even a chance that the officer in question really _was_ dirty, then Roy was happy in his role.

“What the hell are you doing?” Officer Daily roared as he got out of his car.

Roy fought down the urge to run away and the equal but opposite urge to throw an egg directly at Daily. Instead he meekly stood there and allowed himself to be led to the car. Once he was inside, he began thinking about what Xander had said, about how someone had set up the Mayor to kill Altman and then had somehow contrived to make him and his men vanish off of the face of the planet. Xander had come to the conclusion that there were collecting people for something (Xander’s personal theory involved them being sacrificed to some kind of demon in order to gain power, but he hadn't told Roy that) and that Roy should try and sound as though he was the kind of person who was similar enough to the Mayor to fit their profile.

“I was bored, Officer. This city is falling apart, and there’s nothing anyone can do. Want to throw eggs at a cop? Who’s going to stop me? We couldn’t stop Merlyn. This city’s sick. We need an archer with a quiver full of cool toys just to make a dent.” Roy said, feeling faintly nauseous at the inversion of his previous speech to Thea about why he fought. “So tell me, Officer, why shouldn’t I throw eggs at your car?”

Daily didn’t reply. Instead, he pulled over, tasered Roy, and then went on driving.

~*~

“Looks like Daily took the bait.” Vi said.

“Fantastic. Let’s go.” Xander replied.

“Wait, you’re coming? You’re hardly going to be able to fight, not with your ribs.”

“May I remind you what happened last time there was an attack launched against a super strong priest when I wasn’t there? It didn’t go so well.”

“Didn’t go so well when we actually showed up either.”

Sara, listening in on this, just rolled her eyes.

~*~

Daily walked into the room. In the centre of the room were several men sitting in chairs. They were unconscious. More or less. They also had blood streaming from their eyes.

Daily came and stood next a man wearing a skull-like mask with monstrous tusks. On the other side of him was a man wearing a clerical collar and a simple black mask that covered his entire face. “I have another one for you, Brother Blood. He’s in the car outside.” The priest nodded and went to bring him in. 

“Excellent.” Brother Blood said, his voice distorted by a voice filter. “We’re just nearing the end of this cycle. We’ll see how well the centrifuge works.”

Anything else that might have been said was interrupted by a shrill noise that had Brother Blood clutching his ears with his hands. The room was suddenly filled with young girls with swords and bows.

Then, all at once, the screech was cut off. The priest dropped the mangled device that had been causing it and charged at the girls.

He wasn’t alone. At the same time, the men who had been unconscious (more or less) stoop up, blood drying on their faces. They didn’t know what was going on, and truth be told, they didn’t really care. They attacked everyone around them with abandon and superhuman strength. Brother Blood decided to use the confusion to make his getaway, and in so doing completely failed to notice a playing card which fluttered through the air and failed miserably to hit him.

He _did_ notice someone grab him, however. He whirled around and drove an elbow into his assailant’s chest. Xander heard something crack, but he was too busy writhing on the floor in agony to work out what it was.

He was didn’t even notice the syringe of green liquid which was plunged into his neck. He did, however, notice that he was now in colossal amounts of pain and that there was blood leaking from his eyes.

He didn’t notice that his heart stopped, though.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

Xander woke up in a hospital bed. He could tell that immediately, without even having to open his eyes. He’d been in similar situations often enough to know how hospital beds felt.

So it came as something of a surprise when he opened his eye and found that he was actually in his own room. In fact, someone had gone to the effort of leaning his own bed against the wall. Personally, Xander would have preferred to have been in his own bed, but sometimes a Watcher just has to accommodate a Slayer’s odd sense of humour.

“How are you feeling?” said a voice by his ear. Xander would have turned to look, but he got the distinct feeling that movement of any sort would be a _really_ bad idea. Besides, he recognised Vi’s voice when he heard it.

“I feel like a centaur has been dancing on my chest. What happened?”

“The man in the Halloween mask injected you with something.” Vi paused. “It stopped your heart.”

Xander digested this. “Cool. I’ve always wanted to be part of the We Belong Dead club. Please tell me you didn’t actually find a centaur to dance on my chest?”

“No. We, um, we kind of broke a few ribs getting your heart beating again. Well. A few more ribs, I guess. What do you remember?”

“I remember a whole bunch of people with bleeding eyes standing up and attacking everyone in sight. Halloween Man tried to make a break for it, I threw a card at him, failed miserably to hit him, and then… don’t know. How long was I out?”

“Those bleeding eye people – they were strong. As strong as us, more or less, and tough as hell. Most of them were your basic brawler types, but that priest was a real pain to fight. After you went down we got out of there fast. We managed to wreck the centrifuge, but all in all I'd say that it wasn’t exactly out best mission. And you’ve been out for about a day now.”

“Well, isn’t that great? Is everyone okay, at least?”

“Some cuts and bruises. We’re tough too.” Vi paused again. “Sara vanished after the fight though.”

“Shame. Could have used someone like her.”

“Rose was hanging around for ages, waiting for you to wake up. Had to convince her to go on patrol.” Vi leant forward, grinning mischievously. “Pretty sure she has a crush on you.”

“You don’t know Rose very well, do you? She probably just wanted to yell at me for going into a fight with injured ribs or something.”

“Riiight.” Vi said, clearly unconvinced.

“Shush, wannabe Mrs Queen.”

“Shut up!”

“See how annoying it is? Anyway, make sure the girls are okay. Give Roy some time off. Step up the training a bit… if someone is trying to make super soldiers, then we’re going to need some of our own. Which, you know, we already have, so, um, just train them better.”

“Making movie-style speeches is a lot harder in real life, isn’t it?” Vi said sympathetically.

“Just get on with it, will you? You’ve already put me in a hospital bed instead of my own, comfy, warm bed. What more do you want?”

Vi stood up and went to leave. She paused at the door and said “Get better, Xan. I’ve got a couple of girls outside running guard duty – just yell if you need anything.”

“Sure.”

~*~

Xander sat there thinking for some time. Perhaps he fell asleep – he wasn’t quite sure. He did know that he was shocked out of his reverie by Sara opening his window and climbing in. She came and stood at the foot of his bed.

She just stood there. She didn’t say anything.

Eventually, Xander spoke. “Look, normally I’m all for staring contests – I'm pretty good at those – but being eyeballed by someone in black leather isn’t really my thing. So if you, you know, wouldn’t mind saying something?”

“I was wondering if I should kill you.”

Xander blinked. “That’s a bit harsh. I’m sorry about your sonic ball thingy, but I know a guy who can make a new one if you want – it’s really not worth killing me over.”

“You don’t know what you were injected with, do you?”

Xander sighed. “I know it stopped my heart. As long as it doesn’t turn me into some kind of fish creature, I’m happy.”

Sara didn’t react. “It’s called Mirakuru. It makes you strong, tough-“

“-turns you into Captain America-

“-and eventually it drives you insane. Violently insane.”

Xander absorbed this. “So more like a cross between Captain America and the Hulk then.”

“There is no cure, Xander. Eventually, you _will_ lose it, and you _will_ hurt someone. Someone you care about.”

“I’ve been exposed to a lot of stuff in my life. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff that happens to me on a more or less weekly basis. I can handle this.”

“I’ve seen a good man turn into a monster because of that stuff. I thought it had all been destroyed. Trust me. There is no coming back from that. Sooner or later, you are going to lose it.”

“We’ll see about that.” Xander said flatly. “Oh, and if you decide that I need to be, uh, _put down_ … you should know that there are two people outside this room who have heard everything you’ve said and won’t hesitate to stop you. I’d show you out, but I’m stuck in this bed for the time being and we both know that you're going to climb out of the window anyway. Goodbye, Sara.”

Sara hesitated. For a moment, she looked like she wanted to say something, but in the end she thought better of it and left through the window.

When she was gone, the door opened and a Slayer poked her head into the room. “You okay?”

Xander blinked. “You _did_ hear all of that, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Good. Tell the rest of the girls.” Xander swung himself out of bed with a groan. It was painful, yes, but nowhere near as painful as he had expected.

He guessed being injected with Captain Hulk juice had its benefits as well as some problems.

“Are you sure you should be out of bed?” the Slayer asked anxiously.

“Yes. By the time I get back, I want my bed back in its proper place. And give the hospital bed back to the hospital. Or better yet, get the hospital proper beds.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, seeing as how you’re so helpful and sarcastic, now that you mention it…”

~*~

Having one eye and the ability to scowl with the best of them had its advantages. It let Xander get to the bar at Verdant without anyone getting in his way.

Unfortunately, Thea wasn’t there. It was a new girl, one he hadn’t seen before. Xander caught her attention and asked “Hey is Miss… um, is Thea around?”

The new bartender nodded. “She’s in the back. She’s also kind of busy – can you come back in the morning?”

Xander thought about it for a moment. “Probably. But where’s the fun in that?” He made his way to the back, calling “Miss Snooty? Little Miss Snooty?”

“Seriously, Xander, if you keep coming in like this I’ll have you banned.” Thea came out from behind a pile of barrels. “What do you want now? And if you say you’re here for a card game or something, then so help me –“

“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.” Xander interrupted quickly. “You know. Business stuff. Well, my business stuff.”

Thea sighed. “Of course you do. Because nothing says shady private security stuff like coming in really early in the morning yelling Miss Snooty.”

“Ah, you know me so well.” Xander fluttered his eyelashes. “I wanted to talk. We haven’t talked since…“ He wanted to gesture vaguely at his neck, but he didn’t think that his ribs were quite up to that kind of motion. “Well, since you got attacked.”

Thea shrugged awkwardly. “I told the police everything. There wasn’t much to say in the first place. It all happened so fast.”

“Actually, I had a question. Just the one. When did you pass out?”

“When that loud screeching started and he dropped me.” Thea tilted her head and looked at him quizzically. “Why?”

Xander didn’t tell her that it was because he was hoping that she had stayed conscious enough for her to have gotten a glimpse at Sara. If she was friends with Oliver, then chances were that Thea would know her too. “No reason. On a different note… your brother. Any significant blonde women in his life?”

Thea blinked at the sudden subject change. “Uh, what?”

“Blonde women. Your brother. Mixy things?”

“Ollie’s probably slept with half of Starling City. You’re probably going to have to be just a little bit more specific.”

“Someone he trusts. A lot. Not a one night stand.”

Thea looked thoughtful. “His secretary? What’s her name… Felicity?”

“Nope, not her. And apparently she’s an executive assistant. Yeah, I didn’t know that either.” Xander paused. “She’s blonde, about yay high, blue eyes…” Xander decided that it probably wouldn’t help to add that she liked running around in black leather and beating people up. If Oliver had had a fling with someone like that, chances were that he’s be hiding it from his little sister.

“Yeah, not ringing any bells. If you had a picture or something, maybe, but Ollie’s gone out with a lot of girls.”

Xander’s phone went off. “Speaking of ringing bells… I’ll just be a second.”

Thea watched him walk away. She heard him exclaim loudly “What? Are you sure? How do they know?” She saw him nod and say “Okay, that makes sense, but who… nah, nah, Robin Hood’s one thing but running around with a sword is something else.” She saw him nod again. “Right. I’ll go down in… actually, you know what, I’ll call you back.” He hung up and turned back to Thea. Before she could ask him what that had been about, he said cheerfully “Well, you know that masked priest who attacked you and robbed QC? Well, he’s dead. Someone cut his head off. With a sword.”

Thea didn’t quite know how to respond to that. Eventually, she managed an immensely eloquent reply. “Huh?”

“Yep. Exactly. Couldn’t have put it better. So, anyway… if I was going to buy some expensive skincare products, where would I go?”


	18. Chapter Eighteen

Officer Lance had nothing to do.

This was because his superiors were so keen on keeping him away from the Dollmaker case (not to mention anything else of even the slightest interest) that they had clean forgotten to give him something to actually do. He was contemplating going on an unscheduled patrol when a tiny girl who almost certainly wasn’t over eighteen came to his desk and said, in a thick South African accent, “Happy Birthday.” Then she handed him an envelope and left.

Lance didn’t open it immediately. Not least because it was pretty much as far from his birthday as it was possible to get. In his experience, strange South African girls didn’t just hand policemen envelopes. Not unless something strange was going on.

He contemplated the possibility that it was the vigilante contacting him, but he hadn’t heard from the Hood since they had tried and failed to stop Merlyn from destroying half the city. And besides, strange South African girls weren’t really his style.

Lance gingerly flexed the envelope. It certainly _felt_ as though there was nothing inside it other than a card, but with high-tech vigilantes everywhere and goddamn earthquake machines, Lance wasn’t really sure of anything anymore. He contemplated taking it to the bomb squad, but he couldn’t really face the ridicule if it turned out to be nothing more than a prank. His reputation was hardly sterling at the moment anyway.

So he opened it.

It was a card. It was even a birthday card.

With _Yoda_ on the front.

Lance opened the card, and nearly jumped out of his skin when an electronic voice suddenly said “When nine hundred years old you are, look as good you will not.” This, of course, garnered him some strange looks from everyone else in the precinct. He grinned sheepishly, and then read the message written in the card.

_Happy birthday to you  
Happy birthday to you  
I’ve got a present  
So come outside  
…  
I can't rhyme._

It wasn’t signed, but Lance was still fairly certain he could guess who sent it. Certainly not the Hood, who was distinctly lacking anything resembling humour. If it was some shady villain springing up then they wouldn’t be writing to him, a lowly beat cop, and Mathis would be more sinister than goofy.

Plus, Xander was the only person he could think of who regularly worked with young women.

So Lance went outside, and was completely and utterly unsurprised to find Xander leaning against a white van. Lance toyed with telling him that he couldn’t park there, but decided that he couldn’t be bothered. "What do you want?”

“I told you. I have a present for you.” Xander nodded vaguely to the back of the van. The South African girl appeared seemingly out of nowhere and opened the rear doors. Lance hesitated before looking inside. Then he blinked, looked at Xander, who looked back at him impassively, and then back inside.

No, he’d been right the first time. It was Barton Mathis, the Dollmaker, tied up _very_ thoroughly. He even had a gag in his mouth.

Lance looked back at Xander, not even bothering the voice the question.

Xander shrugged. “Citizen’s arrest? My girls spent a good bit of last night watching every high end makeup store in the city. We figured someone famous for ranting about skin would only target people who went for the more expensive skincare products.” Xander shook his head ruefully. “Which I now know more about than I ever wanted to. We caught him about an hour ago.”

“So, again. What do you want? You could have turned in Mathis anonymously. You don’t know me. There’s no reason whatsoever for you to bring him to me, so… why?”

Xander shrugged again. “Because I’m reasonably sure that someone who got demoted for helping out the hood isn’t dirty, and I need someone I can trust.” He paused. “Even if it’s just so I can give you the odd creep we happen to come across.”

Lance narrowed his eyes. “So this has nothing to do with us finding a decapitated preacher whose fingerprints match those left at the QC break-in?”

Xander grinned. “Well, if you could see your way to telling us something that would be nice. But no obligation.”

Lance looked back at Mathis. He’d caught him before. He’d locked him up in Iron Heights and made damn sure that he wasn’t going to get out – and then Merlyn had broken the city and suddenly prison wasn’t quite as inescapable as it should be. Now here he was, tied up, unable to hurt anyone again.

Yeah. No obligation at all.

He didn’t look at Xander when he said “All we have is preliminary stuff. Haven’t had time for much else. What we do know is that something hit him, hard. The ME says he looks like someone hit him with a car and then hacked his head off. With a sword, he says, by the look of it.”

Xander nodded, as though he hadn’t expected much else. “Thank you, Officer.” Then he grinned and said “Happy birthday!”

Lance watched him and the South African girl walk off. He wondered how he was going to explain stumbling across a van with a tied-up serial killer in it.

~*~

As soon as Xander rounded a corner and got out of sight of Lance, he nearly collapsed. Only the timely intervention of Rose and a handy wall stopped him from sprawling on the ground. He supposed that, for someone who had broken most of his ribs and _died_ a couple of days ago, being able to walk around was pretty good. Still, he was too busy to rest. Hopefully the Mirakuru would fix him before he went completely insane.

“You okay?” Rose asked, somewhat redundantly.

“Oh, yes. Just thought I’d test whether gravity was still working.” Xander leant heavily against the wall. “What do you know? It is!”

Rose let go of him, but looked like she was ready to grab him again if he looked like he was going to fall over.

“Sorry.” Xander said, after a moment. “I guess you didn’t really deserve that.”

“What?” Rose said, confused. “Oh, sarcasm. Give rocks.”

It was Xander’s turn to confused. “Uh… what?’

Rose blinked. “Give rocks is like… I don’t care.”

Xander thought about asking why, but realised that he didn’t care. Or rather, he gave rocks. Instead, he said “Vi said you wanted to tell me something?”

“I don’t think now is the time.” Rose said awkwardly. “I know you have… big plans for today. It’s not important.”

Xander very pointedly didn’t mention the fact that he was barely standing. Instead he just said “I’m not going anywhere.”

Rose opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Xander waited patiently. Eventually, she said “I have dreams.”

“If you’re dreaming that you’re a black man in the 1960s, I'm afraid there’s no cure.” Xander said, before he could stop himself.

Rose quite rightly didn’t deign to respond. “You know how lots of the girls talk about how they used to have dreams of past Slayers, back before they were Called? I never got those. Still don’t. But for… oh, about three years now, I’ve been having dreams. Flashes of things that haven’t happened yet. Bad things. It took me a while to work out what they were, but when I did I listened. I changed things. Didn’t go down roads I would have done, stayed away from certain people, slept in certain places.”

Xander digested this. He knew that not all Slayers were equal. Some could sense a vampire in a crowded night club without even having to look, while some had prophetic dreams. Most could do a bit of both, some couldn’t do either. He hadn’t heard of any of them having dreams like that before being Called, but then he hadn’t gone out of his way to find out. He doubted anyone had, not since the Council and all their records had blown up.

“I dreamt of… the fight. The one where you died. I saw it happen.” She paused, and Xander noticed that her knuckled were white, she was clenching her fists so tightly. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. No one was supposed to get hurt. You weren’t… it wasn’t supposed to happen like that. Something went wrong.”

Xander blinked, and didn’t reply. After a long while, he said “I don’t know what I’m meant to do with that. I’ve seen the future change. I’ve seen prophecies thwarted and prophecies come true. I’m no scientist – you’d be better of talking to Willow – but I think, I _think_ , that the future isn’t fixed. Your dreams don’t have to happen, you said that. You can change things. So maybe you did, subconsciously, or… or I did. It wouldn’t be the first time. But, honestly, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I know.” Rose said. “But something went wrong, and it shouldn’t have. I thought you should know.”

“Thank you.” Xander said, although he couldn’t even begin to imagine what he could possibly do with the information.

~*~

Xander went home. He was mildly surprised to find that there was a tuxedo lying on his bed. He’d completely forgotten that he’d asked for that. He was also rather amused to see that someone had thoughtfully decided to add a pair of enormous Hulk gloves to complete the ensemble.

Xander rummaged in the tuxedo’s pockets, found what he was looking for, and promptly went out again.

~*~

Isabel Rochev had something to do.

Isabel Rochev _always_ had something to do. As such, it was rather difficult to arrange a meeting with her. Only members of the Board saw her with anything approaching regularity. Most of the time, she was in her office, working. People didn’t come to see her.

Still, she wasn’t particularly surprised when Xander skirted around her executive assistant, who was ineffectually trying to keep him out, and entered her office. “I’m sorry, ma’am.” Her assistant said apologetically, even wringing her hands. “He just-“

“It’s fine.” Isabel interrupted, the dismissal obvious. The assistant blinked, then left. Isabel made a note to find a more effective and less apologetic one when the opportunity arose. “Well? What are you here for this time?”

Xander grinned and, with a theatrical flourish, produced two pieces of paper seemingly out of thin air, which he placed on her desk. Isabel didn’t look at them. Instead she waited patiently for Xander to speak. “I’m inviting you to the ballet.”

Then, and only then, did Isabel look at the pieces of paper. Sure enough, they were tickets for a performance that same night.

“I know it’s not _Gazelle_ -“

“- _Gisellse_ -“

“-but it has people prancing around, so it’s probably basically the same.”

“Why? Clearly you don’t know anything about ballet. You don’t know me. A few days ago you had me followed. So why?”

“Because you’re basicanscheduled patrol when a tiny giyone knows it. Because now that Altman’s dead, my position is a bit… unstable, and showing up with you might help. And you showing up with a dashing man with an eyepatch can’t hurt your reputation either.”

He was lying. Admittedly, there weren’t any actual signs that he was lying, but he was lying. Isabel didn’t believe that Xander, who had insulted her in a stage whisper the first time they’d met, cared even slightly about his reputation or even for his somewhat shady position in the Mayor’s office. Obviously, he had some other agenda.

“What makes you think that I have the time to go the ballet? As you said, I have a company to run.”

Xander shrugged. “I don’t give rocks about your schedule. I figured that someone who loves the ballet the way you do would make time. I’m sure Oliver can manage one evening without breaking it.” Xander paused. “Or is it I _do_ give rocks?”

Isabel didn’t reply. It was by drum to her. She just looked at the tickets. They were decent seats. And Oliver probably could handle the company for one evening. And she hadn’t been to the ballet for so long.

“Fine.”


	19. Chapter Nineteen

Xander had been planning to practise throwing cards until meeting Isabel that evening. Captain America he might be, but his ribs weren’t healed yet and being recently dead really takes it out of a guy. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the Captain America juice, he’d probably be in a hospital bed right now. Again.

Still, Xander should have known better that nothing would go according to plan. Not even a plan as simple as lying on his bed for a few hours idly tossing cards around.

For one thing, he actually managed to toss the cards properly. Normally they just fluttered harmlessly to the ground a few feet away from her was. He wasn’t sure why, he was sure that he was doing everything correctly, but they never flew across the room and knocked things over.

So Xander was taken completely by surprise when the first card he threw went flying across the room and knocked over a half-empty cup of coffee that he had left there that morning. He tried again, and managed to make the cup roll off the table.

Okay. Sara _had_ mentioned that the Mirakuru was supposed to make him stronger and all of that. Other than the fact that he felt unusually okay for someone with a bunch of broken ribs, he hadn’t really noticed anything out of the ordinary. But he’d just managed to throw a card across the room…

Well, really, that wasn’t anything special. Lots of people could do that. Lots of _ordinary_ people. It was just that Xander hadn’t been one of them.

Before he could muse on the situation any further, his phone rang.

It was Willow. Xander debated briefly as to whether he should pick up. He couldn’t think of any reason that Willow might call other than because she had found out that he had been injected with some kind of formula which, apparently, was going to drive him violently insane. And, really, he thought that he could do without that kind of talk. He’d hoped that it would take longer for the news to spread.

On the other hand, Willow was perfectly capable of making his phone accept that call regardless of what Xander wanted. Even if she didn’t, she might take it into her head to appear personally.

So he picked up, and said “Hey, Will. Guess who just managed to knock over a cup with a playing card?”

There was a long pause before Willow answered. “Uh, you? I mean, you're the only person I know who’s obsessed with cards, and you _are_ the person I'm talking to, so… probably you.”

“Got it in one.”

“Well… congratulations?” Willow offered.

Xander grinned. “It’s no big deal. If I’d smashed the cup, now…”

“What’s the deal with the cards anyway?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Xander said, surprised. “I’m sure I told you. I was down in Spain, and-“

“Tell me some other time.” Willow interrupted. “I found Barry.”

“ _You_ found Barry? How? How did you even know about Barry in the first place?” Xander said, while feeling immensely relieved that Willow _wasn’t_ calling because she had heard about the Mirakuru.

“Vi called Giles to ask if Glory was still alive, and told him about Barry vanishing and his mother. He called me to keep a look out. Then I found him. Well, I assume it’s him because he’s a CSI called Barry Allen, and I'm assuming that there aren’t many of those around.”

“Hold on. You _assume_ it’s him? Can't you just ask him? Where’d you find him, anyway? I thought you were in Central City.”

“I am in Central City. And no, I can't ask Barry anything, because he’s in a coma. He was injured when the particle accelerator blew.”

Okay. Barry had been in Starling City a few hours before the incident at S.T.A.R. Labs. Even if he’d gotten on a train instantly, he would have been hard pressed to make it back to Central City before the explosion. In any case, Xander didn’t have any idea why Glory would whisk him away to another city only for him to be put in a coma by an explosion. It didn’t add up. Something was missing.

Still, Willow was in Central City doing basically the same thing he was, and if anyone was going to be able to stand up to a rampaging Glory it would be her.

They chatted for a while longer before Willow hung up, and Xander went back to idly tossing cards around.

~*~

Strictly speaking, Xander didn’t need to dress up to go to the ballet. He’d heard that you could be casual. However, given that he didn’t have even the slightest interest in the ballet itself and was going, at least in part, so that he could be seen, he thought that he might as well wear a tuxedo and rent a limousine.

He knew better than to go to Isabel’s house. He knew from Anna that she was barely ever there in the first place. So he told the driver to pull up outside QC, went inside and told an… executive assistant to tell Isabel that he was outside.

About ten minutes later, she showed up. She hadn’t dressed up, and was wearing the same kind of pantsuit that she had been wearing earlier. She took one look at Xander in his tuxedo and his limo behind him and said “You know this isn’t your prom, right?”

“I know. I just thought-“

“I mean, I know you’re young, but I didn’t think you were _that_ young.”

This time Xander didn’t bother replying, and simply opened the door for her. She went inside, but couldn’t help saying “You’re not going to give me a corsage, are you?”

At that point, Xander strongly regretted having repeatedly called Thea ‘Miss Snooty’. He was absolutely _certain_ that Isabel was a stronger contender for the title. If not a ruder epithet altogether.

~*~

It didn’t take long for them to arrive. Isabel saw a couple of people that she knew, people from rival businesses in Starling, but this wasn’t an opening night or a special event so there weren’t many there. Most of the people, she imagined must be simply ballet fans. However, they did recognise her and were obviously curious about the young, overdressed man in an eyepatch that was with her. She was certain that rumours were going to start spreading because of this. She was certain that she knew what kind of rumours they would be, and she found that she didn’t actually care. She was, after all, Vice President of _Acquisitions_ , meaning that it wouldn’t be all that long before she moved somewhere else. She just needed to sort out Queen, and she would be out of there.

When they got to their row, she waited, expecting Xander to go first. She was somewhat surprised when he gestured for her to go ahead of him, because that meant that he wouldn’t be able to see her without completely turning his head. Given that she suspected the reason he had invited her here was so that he would see how she reacted to being at the ballet, despite all the articles that she was _sure_ Xander had dug up with such inane headings as ‘Ex-ballerina pirouettes onto the business stage’, she couldn’t work out why Xander wasn’t keeping an eye on her.

But then the curtains went up, and the ballet began. Isabel had never particularly liked _Swan Lake_ , but when the dancers started dancing and the music started playing she completely forgot all of that, forgot Xander and Queen and her business and everything else. There was just the movement of the dancers, and the old, bitter ache that she thought that she had healed but it turned out that she had merely buried, the ache because, even as she watched the fluid movements, as she followed them and anticipated them, she knew that she could never be up there, moving like that.

And then the interval came, and she was Isabel again. She noticed that Xander had absentmindedly torn up his programme and made some kind of abstract pattern on with the pieces. For a moment, she felt bewildered that anyone could possibly have had the mental energy to do such thing while watching the ballet, but then she remembered that not everyone was as affected by it as she was. Not by a long shot.

“What did you think?” Xander asked neutrally.

Isabel fought down the instinctive response of ‘beautiful’ and instead merely shrugged. “The costumes weren’t great, and Odette relied until too much on having a pained expression to carry across her feelings, and…” she paused, realising that if she didn’t stop now she could quite happily go on for a good few hours. “…what did you think?”

She knew what he was going to say. It was obvious, evident in everything about him. “They were people dancing around.”

She looked back at the stage, not really seeing that. She felt… _something_ , something she really didn’t want to feel. There was a reason that she hadn’t been to the ballet for years. Of course, there was that yearning, that desire to be part of it, but then there was the… _uglier_ side of it. So, without looking at Xander, she said “Let’s go.”

He was surprised. She didn’t need to see him to know that. “This is only the interval. Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Isabel could have said something about how Xander clearly didn’t want to be there, but she wasn’t the kind of person to care even slightly about what he wanted and they both knew it. So she didn’t offer any sort of explanation. She was sure that Xander would rather come up with some convoluted theory to explain why in any case.

They left. Isabel knew that this would only fuel the rumours, that leaving something early with a younger man would only make people even more certain that she was having some kind of fling. She couldn’t care less. She just wanted to get out.

The limo wasn’t there. Isabel supposed that Xander had arranged for it to pick them up once the ballet had ended, which it wouldn’t for a while yet. She had her phone out to call her own driver when Xander said “Do you want to get something to eat?”

She blinked in surprise. She had thought that Xander had gotten everything he wanted at the ballet house. He’d seen how she reacted and had in turn been seen in the company of a powerful businesswoman. She didn’t know what he wanted beyond that.

She wanted to go home. She wanted to bury herself in work and forget this, forget everything, but she knew that she should find out what Xander wanted. If she knew that, she had leverage, and if he was after Queen (and he seemed to be) for some reason that could be exactly what she needed. So she said “Yes.”

~*~

There are many places people go for a meal after the ballet. Very few people, however, go Big Belly Burger. Normally, Isabel wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like this, but the thought of it possibly adding more grist to the rumour mill amused her.

She would have been even more amused if she had known that several of the staff, upon seeing a man in a tuxedo and an eyepatch come in with a woman about a decade older than him, thought that they were spies.

They ordered. Well, Xander ordered. While Isabel could just about tolerating being inside the place in the first place, she couldn’t bring herself to actually eat.

After that, Xander leant forward, steepled his fingers and asked “Who’s the man in the skull mask?”

Isabel blinked. “What?”

“Skull mask. Man in the. Who is he?”

“I have no idea who you're talking about.”

“Right.” Xander said sceptically. “You sure about that?”

“Are we really going through this again? You’re accusing me of… something, I honestly don’t know what, and I’m going to guess that you’re reasoning is pretty flimsy too. What is it this time? I left the ballet early because, I don’t know, I’m evil? Is that it?”

“No.” Xander said shortly. “It’s because you were there when Barry told us that he’d found trace amounts of sugar left behind by the man who broke into QC. Then, when we found the factory where the sugar came from, there was no one there. They’d cleared out. Someone gave them a warning. It wasn’t Oliver. For a long time a thought that it might be one of my people, that they might be a traitor, but then I remembered that _you_ were there too. You tried to take over QC, and you’re working with the man who killed Mayor Altman, not to mention two security guards. So tell me, who’s the man in the skull mask?”

“That doesn’t-“

“You made me doubt my people.” Xander said, coldly. “You don’t get to sit there in front of me and give me some spiel about how it wasn’t you. You made me doubt them, and you don’t get to do that. So you’re going to tell me the truth, and you’re going to do it now.”

“ _Listen._ What you’re saying doesn’t make sense. Just because… whoever you’re after wasn’t where you thought they were going to be, doesn’t mean that I told them you were coming. They could have just moved. And yes, I tried to take over QC, but I’ve taken over plenty of businesses before. That’s my _job_. Plus why would I have someone rob my own company? What is there for me to gain? I don’t benefit from any of this. In fact it’s damaging QC’s shares, which means it’ll be even longer before I can get it running again. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Just because I don’t know why you did it doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.” Xander said stubbornly. “I trust my people. I even trust Oliver, more or less. But I don’t trust you.”

“Then why did you invite me to the ballet? I thought it was so you could watch my reaction, so you could see if I was telling the truth about me wanting to… wanting to be a ballerina. But you didn’t look, you were busy shredding your programme. You couldn’t even see me. You’ve clearly made your mind up that I'm guilty, but why did you ask me to go in the first place?”

“I did watch you. You didn’t notice. Your eyes never left the stage, you sat on the edge of your seat. I don’t think you even blinked, not once. I’ve never seen anyone get so involved in everything. You loved it. You loved everything about it, but then when I asked you what you thought you criticised it and decided to leave. I don’t know why. Just like I don’t know why you’re working for the man in the skull mask. You're a mystery to me, Isabel, but I'm not stopping until I’ve solved it.”

Isabel stood to leave. “Clearly you’ve already made your verdict. There’s nothing I can say that will change your-“

“You can tell me why you stopped dancing.”

Isabel was certain, absolutely _certain_ , that no emotion showed on her face. She wished that she could say that that was because she wasn’t feeling anything at all, but that would be a complete lie. She turned and left without a word.

Well, she tried to. Xander grabbed her by the arms and spun her around. She tried to break free, but she couldn’t shift his hands at all. His grip was tight, too tight, tight enough that she thought she was going to bruise, and she didn’t think Xander noticed. Xander opened his mouth to say something, and she kneed him in the groin.

By the time Xander was capable of coherent thought, she was long gone.


	20. Chapter Twenty

Eventually, Xander got to the stage where he thought that he could stand up. However, just as he was about to try, his phone rang. He decided that, really, he could do without standing up just then. The floor wasn’t likely to attack him. So he managed, with some difficulty, to pull out and answer his phone.

“Hey, Vi. What’s going on?”

Xander had expected her to ask why he wasn’t currently at the ballet, perhaps say something sarcastic. He did not expect her to say “We got attacked.”

Xander stood up and was out the door before his brain had even fully digested the information. “Is anyone hurt?”

“Not really. Just a few bruises. It was one man, Xander.”

“Oh.” Xander said, sagging with relief.

“No. You don’t get it. He was _one man_. He just walked in here with some kind of gas grenade and attacked us. Just one man. We’re Slayers, Xan. He was as strong as we are, and swords didn’t do much more than scratch him.”

“Oh.”

“He wasn’t that good, but he took us by surprise. If there had been more of them, we’d have been in a bit of trouble.” Vi sighed. “I guess you don’t want to be a test subject, but we could really do with finding out what will stop these guys. We’re faster than them, more skilled, but they are _tough_.”

“Never mind that. I know a guy. Just… move somewhere else. Make sure they can't find us.”

“Already done, boss.”

“How’d you deal with him, anyway?”

Vi sighed again. “Lizzie chucked a knife at his eye. She’s a good shot.”

Xander rubbed his eye tiredly. “Make sure she’s okay.”

Xander hung up, and only then did it occur to him that he didn’t know how anyone had found out where they were in the first place.

~*~

Thea was not having a good day.

Well, really, she hadn’t been having a good few months. Having your mother awaiting trial for colluding in the murder of more than 500 people tended to put a damper on things. The fact that Oliver had vanished for most of it and Roy had been going out and getting himself beaten up almost every night hadn’t helped either.

Despite all of that, she felt perfectly justified in saying that she was still having a bad day. The jury were deliberating their verdict, and were taking their time on it. She’d spent most of her day nervously waiting for the results to come in. As much as she would have loved to get heavily involved in work at Verdant, she couldn’t focus. Added to that, Roy hadn’t been around for the last couple of days. Just when she needed her boyfriend around the most, he was nowhere to be found. She didn’t have a clue where Oliver had gone, either.

The day dragged on. Thea wandered around the mansion in a worried daze, repeatedly dwelling on the same thoughts. She couldn’t even sit still.

She noticed with some surprise that it was dark, and she still hadn't heard anything – not from the jury, not from Roy, not even from Oliver. And she’d had enough of it. She couldn’t take the anxiety any more. She wanted her boyfriend back.

So Thea rummaged around until she found the card that Xander had given her. If her boyfriend’s boss wouldn’t let her see him, then… well, she’d ban Xander from Verdant until she could think of something more serious to do.

To her surprise, Xander answered immediately. “Who is this?”

“Thea.” There was a pause, while Xander was clearly trying to work out what she was calling about. “I’m calling about Roy.”

Xander sighed noisily. “What’s he done now?”

It was Thea’s turn to pause. “He’s not with you?”

“No… we gave him some time off while your mom’s on trial.” Xander said. “You mean he’s not with…” Xander trailed off. “Where are you? No, never mind. Get to Verdant as quickly as you can.”

~*~

It was night, so Thea supposed that she shouldn’t be surprised that people were at Verdant. It was a night club. Still, it felt… weird, to see that the world was still continuing on without her.

Xander materialised from out of the crowd and pulled her over to the bar.

Thea had thought that she was having a bad day. But then she’d seen Xander’s face, and the worried knot in her stomach that had been there since the trial had started seemed to have grown to the point that it was actually crushing her internal organs. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to Roy? Is he… where is he?”

“I… I don’t know. I think that someone’s taken him.”

Thea collapsed onto her seat. She didn’t have either the mental energy or the physical strength to stand. Automatically, without thinking about what she was saying, she asked “Who?”

“I’m not sure. Someone who’s out to get me and my people. But we’ll get him back, we’re looking-“

“You lost him.”

“Yes.” Xander said, after a long pause. “It’s my fault. If he hadn’t… if I hadn’t offered him a job, he’d probably be right here with you. But, Thea, we-“

“No. No, you don’t get to sit here talking to me while Roy is… while Roy is out there, somewhere. You don’t, you have to…” Thea trailed off incoherently and stood to leave. She wanted to get out, to go… somewhere, somewhere not filled with happy dancing people who didn’t seem to have any cares whatsoever.

Xander grabbed her arm. Thea tried to break free, but his arm didn’t move at all. “You can’t go. It isn’t safe. If they have Roy they might go for you.”

“Why?” Thea said, not entirely sure if she was asking why people might come after her or if she was just asking the universe why _everything_.

“Because you're a Queen. Because these people, whoever they are, are well connected and know things that they shouldn’t know. Because people are really annoyed at your mom right now and it might be a good idea if you’re somewhere where people can't get at you. So stay here.”

“Right. I’m _sure_ I’m safe-“

“The woman working behind the bar is Michaela. She works for me. There are more of them dotted around the room. Trust me. No one is going to get close to you.” Xander stood to leave, and then paused. “We _will_ get him back, Thea. I promise you that.”

~*~

Xander had people looking everywhere for Roy.

However, not everyone was looking for him. Not everyone that could be, that is. So he went to the QC building and took the elevator to Oliver’s floor.

It was late. He was somewhat surprised to find that Oliver was actually there. He supposed that being a CEO made it a little difficult to find the time to put on a costume and shoot people. Maybe Isabel had even yelled at him a bit after coming back from the ballet. Maybe he just needed to take his mind of his mom’s trial.

Honestly, Xander didn’t care. He’d had enough of Oliver hiding. He was blatantly the Hood. Xander didn’t understand why he kept denying it. He had a city full of people he had to keep safe, and he couldn’t do that if Oliver kept working at cross-purposes to him. They should be on the same side. Even if Oliver was a killer. He needed all the help he could get, and he did _not_ need someone who would keep getting in his way. So he went inside.

“What do you want?” Oliver said, without looking up.

“The Hood.” Xander replied simply.

“I’ve told you-“

“Someone’s taken Roy. Your sister’s boyfriend. I have people looking for him, but we can only do so much. So stop getting in my way and help me find him.” Xander left without waiting for Oliver to give a response. If he didn’t help then he wasn’t the man that Xander thought he was.

~*~

Oliver called Felicity. Felicity hacked into security cameras across the city, ran her facial recognition software and found Roy leaving Verdant at about noon the previous day. A car had pulled up next to him, and a man got out, Tasered Roy and pulled him into the car. Oliver vaguely recognised the man as police officer who worked in the same precinct as Lance. Felicity then tracked the car to an abandoned warehouse. The man took Roy inside, and there was nothing to suggest that either of them had left, or that anyone else had come in. Oliver didn’t know what a police officer would have against Roy, and he didn’t really care. He was going to get him and find out.

He didn’t contact Xander. Not just because he didn’t have a way to do that quickly, but because he was not going to admit that he was the Hood. He didn’t trust Xander. Oh, he didn’t think that Xander was one of the bad guys, but that didn’t mean that he had to trust him. Oliver wasn’t trusting at the best of times, and this certainly wasn’t one of those.

So he went out to get Roy back.

~*~

There were no guards at the warehouse. In fact, it looked like there was no one there at all. There were no lights on, and Oliver couldn’t hear or see anyone moving. So he went inside.

As it turned out, there was exactly one person there, and that person was Roy. He was tied to a chair in the middle of an empty room, gagged and seemingly unconscious. Oliver went to untie him.

There was a faint click and a whir. Oliver instinctively ducked and rolled, coming to his feet several feet away. He completely missed seeing a woman in black leather and blonde hair knocking a dart of some sort out of the air with a staff. He did, however, see her leave. He would have followed her, but Roy chose that exact moment to groan and shift in his chair, and Oliver didn’t think that he could leave him there, tied up and helpless in a room that had at least one trap in it, in order to go and follow her. So instead he cut Roy free and ungagged him.

Roy opened his eyes blearily. To begin with, he seemed to have difficulty focusing, but eventually he managed it. “You’re him. The Hood. You’re still alive.”

“Tell me what happened.” Oliver said, careful to disguise his voice with his voice modulator and keep his face hidden.

Roy shuddered. “He gave me something. I-it hurt, and it would stop. It just kept on going, just kept hurting and then they gave me more so that it would go away…”

“Who? Who did it?” Oliver asked.

He had expected Roy to say that it was the police officer. What he hadn’t expected was Roy to say “The man in the mask.”

~*~

Lance was filling out paperwork on Mathis when Officer Daily sat down in front of him and said “I’d like to turn myself in.”

Lance blinked, thinking that he couldn’t possibly have heard that correctly. “What?”

“I would like to turn myself in.” Daily said, smiling faintly. “For ordering the attempted murder of Thea Queen, the break-in at Queen Consolidated, the murder of Cyrus Gold and the kidnapping of Roy Harper. Among a few other things.”

“If this is some kind of twisted joke…” Lance said uncertainly.

“I used to work for Malcolm Merlyn.” Daily continued as though Lance hadn't spoken. “He had a vision. He was going to make this city… better. But he failed, so it was up to me. But I see now that this city is broken, and deserves everything that’s coming to it. It’s punishing Moira Queen for something that half the people in this city would have done, if they had the chance. The people of this city are so low that God must look down on us and feel dizzy from the vertigo.” Daley stood and pulled out a demonic Halloween mask. He put it on, and said “If God won’t wipe this city clean, then it’s up to us.”

Daily pulled out his gun, shot at the ceiling and yelled “Death is a release from this life. None of you have completed your sentences!” He whirled, pointing his gun at Lance.

Half a dozen policemen fired on him at once, and Daily was dead before he hit the ground.


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

People were getting sick. It started out with ‘flu-like symptoms, which was weird, because most of the city had recently been given ‘flu shots. But it developed rapidly - they started shivering, they collapsed, and then the pain started.

Normally, an epidemic wouldn’t have been Xander’s problem. Unless of course there were creepy people floating around stealing people’s voices, or someone who could only be seen by ill children… regardless, under ordinary circumstances it wouldn’t be Xander’s problem.

It started being Xander’s problem when his Slayers started getting sick. All of them, at more or less the same time. It started with Shannon and Sophia, presumably because they were still recovering from their injuries, but others were soon showing symptoms.

Given that a not inconsiderable amount of them were currently at Verdant making sure that no one was going to make a move on Thea, this caused some problems. People collapsing in a night club wasn’t exactly conducive to calm. People began to panic, although some of them couldn’t possibly know what was going on through the noise and the crowd. All it took was for someone in the crowd to say “I think she’s dead!” for people to begin a stampede for the exits.

Sometime later, while the Slayers were in a hospital, baffling doctors alongside Roy and a large number of citizens showing the same symptoms, Thea found that someone had put a bullet with her name on it in her pocket.

~*~

Xander was sitting in a car outside the Queen’s mansion. He knew that Oliver was there, because he’d been camped out with the paparazzi who were eager for a comment from the man whose mother may or may not be given the death penalty soon and had seen him go in.

Xander knew what had happened to the Slayers. He also knew that he couldn’t do anything about that, because he was no doctor – but more importantly, he didn’t have all the information. He knew that someone had found Roy, but he didn’t know where. He knew that Roy had developed the same symptoms as his Slayers and what seemed like half the city, but he didn’t know _why_.

Which was why he was here, because Oliver obviously _did_ know something. Enough to find Roy, in any case, which was more than Xander did. Plus, given that there was no doubt that Oliver was the Hood, he knew the criminal underside of this city far better than Xander did. If anyone knew someone who had the capacity to infect half the city, it was Oliver.

The Queen mansion probably had some good security. Good enough that the paparazzi had given up and gone to cover the epidemic instead of lurking outside. Breaking in probably wasn’t a good idea, especially given that Lance was already suspicious of him.

But then, Xander wasn’t exactly known for the brilliance of his ideas.

The first obstacle was the gate. He could climb it, he knew – while it was fairly forbidding, Xander had more than a little experience into getting in and out of places that people didn’t want him to be. But, on the other hand, there was the chance that he could just jump over it. Apparently the Mirakuru put him on more or less equal footing with a Slayer, and he’d seen Buffy jump over the gate back at Sunnydale High often enough. It shouldn’t be that difficult.

After a couple of minutes bouncing on the spot, Xander just climbed over. Super strong he might be, but human grasshopper he wasn’t.

He made his way to the front door, feeling sure that there were a half dozen camera following his every move. He knocked, and wasn’t surprised to find that there was no answer. It was, after all, very late. Any self-respecting person would be asleep by now. Of course, the Hood wasn’t exactly your average, eight-hours-of-sleep-a-night kind of guy. If Xander wasn’t sleeping, he highly doubted that Oliver was either.

He rang the doorbell, thinking that perhaps a knock simply hadn't carried to whatever remote corner of the mansion that Oliver had hidden himself in. When there was no response, Xander put his palms on the door and pushed.

He quickly reached the point where he couldn’t push any harder. Or, rather, he reached the point where he _wouldn’t_ have been able to push harder, before he’d been given Mirakuru. Instead, he just kept pushing harder, the pressure building. After a while, Xander became sure that the door was reinforced – it couldn’t be simply wood, he was sure that would have broken by now.

The door didn’t break, but with a loud squeal the hinges tore free from the frame and the door collapsed inward.

Xander looked at the door in surprise.

Then he looked at the arrow nestled in his arm in surprise.

It hurt, but not nearly as much as he had expected. He would have expected to be bleeding heavily now, but the arrow seemed to have barely penetrated. It felt like a papercut. Admittedly, a really painful and deep papercut, but definitely not what he would have expected.

“What was that for?” Xander said indignantly.

Oliver just stared at him, another arrow nocked in his bow, ready to fire. For some unfathomable reason, he was shirtless. 

“You could have just opened your door, you know.” Xander pulled out the arrow with a wince.

“Like I would have opened my door to a demon.” Oliver growled.

Xander blinked. “Demon? Why would you…” he looked down at the door. “Oh.”

“I heard what you said to Barry. About you working being part of an organisation of Slayers, and how you stop evil supernatural creatures.” Oliver said. “Except the thing is that there’s only _one_ Slayer, and she’s always a woman. You definitely aren’t a woman, but no ordinary person does that to a reinforced door. So who are you - _what_ are you, really?” 

“More up to date than you, that’s for sure.” Xander rubbed his arm absently. “Although I’d love to know how a man supposedly stuck on an island for five years heard anything about Slayers. Anyway, there _used_ to be only one. But then, thanks to a long story, there were two. Then about a year ago, a witch cast a spell and now there are Slayers all over the place.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because if I wasn’t trustworthy, then I’d have told everyone in the city that you’re the Hood.” Xander said. “And if that’s not good enough for you… every single one of my people has been infected with the same whatever-it-is that’s affecting half the city. If I was the bad guy, I’d be safe underground poisoning everyone else. You wouldn’t even know who I was if I hadn't come to see you.”

This made some sense. Merlyn’s Undertaking had been so secret that it had taken him almost a year to get to the bottom of it. Xander had moved in and almost immediately attached himself to the Mayor’s office. He’d hardly been low profile. Plus he had helped put up lots of temporary housing for the people from the Glades who had lost their homes.

But on the other hand…

“Then what about you? Even assuming you're telling the truth, why are you so strong?”

Xander looked at him intently. “If I said Mirakuru, what-“

Oliver shot him.

Xander, to his great surprise, caught the arrow in mid-air. “Well, I guess that answers that.”

“You _can’t_ \- it isn’t possible.” Oliver looked shocked. Given that he had seemed perfectly composed when Xander had broken down his door and been unfazed about taking an arrow to his arm, this was something of a surprise. “I destroyed the Mirakuru myself.”

“Well, someone in this city is making more. They stole your centrifuge to do it. Someone in a Halloween mask is making super soldiers, and for some reason they thought that injecting me was a good idea.” Xander didn’t press him about the Mirakuru. That could wait for another time. Preferably one when Oliver was holding a weapon.

“A man in a mask? Laurel told me… at the precinct earlier, one of the officers put on a mask and started talking about cleansing the city before he got put down.”

Xander tilted his head. “Officer Daily?” Oliver nodded. “It’s not him. He’s taking the fall for someone.”

“You sure?”

“Yup. See what happens when we actually share information and you stop getting in my way? If we’d had a conversation like this earlier then I wouldn’t have had to break your door.”

Whatever Oliver might have said in response was cut off by Xander’s phone ringing. Xander held up a hand to tell Oliver that he was going to be a moment before realising that he was still holding an arrow in it. He dropped it and picked up his phone. 

“Hello?”

“Xander, its Thea. You know how you said that you’d keep me safe-“

Xander, who wasn’t really in the mood for Thea to be snooty at him, said “Yeah, as a matter of fact I was just talking to the Hood about that.”

There was silence for a few seconds. “The Hood is alive? Wait – you know who he is?”

Xander grinned. For some reason - perhaps because Oliver had shot him, or perhaps because he kept getting in Xander’s way, or perhaps just because Xander was feeling a bit mischievous – he said “Yep. He’s your brother.”

Oliver looked angry for a moment. Then he shrugged, and said “I go by the Arrow now.”

~*~

The rest of the night was interesting, at least for Xander. Oliver told him that his Slayers, Roy and half the city had been given a dose of a drug called Vertigo. He didn’t know how, but Felicity was apparently working on a treatment.

Then Thea came home and yelled at Oliver for a long time. Xander didn’t stay to see how that ended.

However, in the morning, two interesting things happened.

Firstly, Moira Queen was acquitted by the jury. Xander was more than a little surprised by this.

Secondly, someone hijacked every TV in the city. He called himself Count Vertigo, and told everyone that the only way to get around the crippling pain that so many were dealing with was to go and pay a visit to their friendly neighbourhood Vertigo dealer.

There wasn’t much that Xander could do about that. While he could catch arrows, apparently, he suspected that a drug lord would have more modern weaponry and he didn’t want to storm in with nothing but a shield. Not that he had any idea where to look in the first place. He had to wait until Oliver worked up a cure.

So instead, he sat down and tried to work out how the Count had managed to get Vertigo to so many people so quickly.

After a while, he thought he had his answer. ‘Flu shots. There had been trucks going all over the city, giving out shots. After the Undertaking, people had been more than happy to take them. It made them feel safe.

Of course, in order to get vertigo to as many people as he could, the Count would have had to be using the majority of the trucks, which seemed unlikely. That would take a lot of men and time, and given that FEMA trucks had been raided for the last few months and the Count had only escaped from prison when Merlyn had destroyed the city, it didn’t seem possible that he could have organised it.

Which meant that someone in power had arranged for everything and then handed over the trucks to the Count.

Xander had already suspected that Sebastian Blood, the Alderman for the Glades, was up to something. His proximity to Daily had more or less proved that, and now that Daily had tried to pass himself off as the man in mask and gotten himself killed it looked as though Blood was free to do whatever he liked. According to Vi’s research, he was squeaky clean, but Xander thought he merited a closer look.

But that could wait until his people were back on their feet again. Until then, he had to go and see a man about some weapons.


	22. Chapter Twenty-Two

There was a man who makes weapons.

That is not to say that he makes the kind of ordinary weapons that any half decent magic-user might be able to make. Any sorcerer can make a sword that will stay sharp, not matter what you might do to it. But if you wanted a sword forged in a dragon’s breath and made out of unicorn horn, then you went to this man. Even though unicorns didn’t exist, he’d still make it for you. And that was the least of his skills.

There were lots of stories told about the man. Legend said that he’d been around for millennia. They said he was more machine than man. They said that he’d made deadly plagues before the concept of germs had even existed. But these were all stories – no one knew the truth. No one even knew his name. He was just called X. The only thing that anyone knew for certain was that he made weapons the like of which no one had ever seen.

Buffy had met him a few months ago in a small town in China. She’d tracked him down, because someone was trying to summon some kind of snake deity which had ruled over the region thousands of years before, when the Old Ones were still around. Apparently it could only be killed by a certain weapon – the problem was, no one knew what that weapon was, only that it had been destroyed millennia ago.

X had nodded sagely, and five minutes later he’d handed her a boomerang. The snake deity had, quite literally, no idea what had hit it. The price for this was a small flat in Blüdhaven, a city a few hours travel from Starling City. It was a small price to pay – there were stories of X asking for entire kingdoms for the things he made. There were also stories about the things that had happened to people who had refused to pay.

Xander was currently at the flat. It was a lot bigger on the inside than it should have been – or rather, the outside was a much bigger than it should have been. Looking back at the door, it stretched so high that it was almost out of sight. Xander realised that everything in the room had shrunk, allowing X to fit things that shouldn’t possibly have been able to fit in a small flat. Of course, Xander didn’t know most of what the things were.

He was there to have a few things made. The first thing that he had asked for was for some nets, capable of stopping someone as strong as a Slayer. X had grimaced – Xander got the impression that he had been asked to make things like that before. He’d also asked for the same kind of sonic grenades as Sara had used, and had been mildly surprised when he’d passed him half a dozen of them and a handful of ear plugs almost before he’d finished speaking.

Then, almost as an afterthought, Xander had asked for a pack of playing cards that he could use as throwing weapons. At that, X had smiled. “Interesting. It’s not often that people ask for something original.” X’s accent was odd. It sounded as though it was a combination of accents from at least ten different countries, but then after a couple of words it shifted and reflected perhaps another ten entirely different countries. “Perhaps there is something else you’d like. A cybernetic eye? I can make one that will be thousands of times better than your old one was. You could see the entire electromagnetic spectrum – interface with machines… I’m sure you can think of some other additions yourself.”

Xander smiled faintly. “Maybe some other time. I’m not ready to go full-on cyborg yet. I’m still thinking that resistance isn’t quite futile.”

“Whatever you say.” X said, apparently having already lost interest. He moved away, heading deeper into his labyrinthine workshop. He returned a few minutes later with a pack of cards in his hand. “What do you think?”

Xander took them and examined them closely. They looked like ordinary playing cards, but when he folded them he found that they didn’t crease. When he tapped them with his fingernail, there was a slight ringing sound, as though they were made out of glass or some kind of ceramic. But their edges certainly weren’t sharp, and he didn’t see how they would be any more effective as weapons than the card that had failed to smash a cup yesterday. “Um…”

“Throw one. Go on.” X pointed at a target that Xander was absolutely sure hadn’t been there a few seconds earlier. Xander paused for a moment, looking at X (who looked like a child trying out a new toy), before throwing a card.

It hit the bullseye and embedded itself so deeply that it was almost invisible. “They only become sharp when you throw them. That way, you can still play with them without cutting yourself.” X took them back, and faster than Xander could follow he threw cards at the target. Perhaps two seconds later, the whole deck was embedded there, and the individual cards were so close together that it looked as though the entire deck was growing out of the target.

Or, rather, _almost_ the entire deck. One card still remained in X’s hand. The Joker, Xander saw after a moment. “There’s one more thing.” X put the Joker face down on his palm, and then flipped it. Suddenly the entire deck was back in his hand. Xander looked at the target – the deck was gone. “This makes sure you don’t lose your cards when you throw them. Just don’t lose the Joker.” X handed Xander back the cards.

Xander took them, somewhat warily. They were great. Perfect, as a matter of fact. With them he didn’t have to rely on his somewhat shaky martial art skills, and they were much, much more compact than a bow. They could be, quite literally, his calling cards. “What about the price?”

X’s eyes narrowed. “I’d just like to ask you a few questions.”

Xander looked at him in surprise. He’d been expecting something suitably exorbitant. “How many?”

“That depends on what your answers are. Not many, though.”

Xander paused, looked down at the cards and the sonic grenades. “Fine.”

“When were you injected with Mirakuru?”

Xander, was, if anything, even more surprised. “How did you know about that?”

X shrugged easily. “The way you stand, the way you move. Your muscle density.” X smiled. “I made the Mirakuru formula for the Japanese more than seventy years ago. I’d be a poor weapon master if I couldn’t recognise my own works.”

Xander supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised by that, given the rumours. “A few days ago.”

“And the side effects? Any uncontrollable rage?”

“None so far.” Xander looked at him. “If you’re the brilliant weapon maker you're supposed to be, why are there side effects in the first place?”

“It was designed to fill the enemy with fear. An enemy that couldn’t be stopped by bullets, one that would just keep on coming, filled with an immense anger. By the time they got to the enemy they’d be angry enough to tear them apart with their bare hands. The psychological attack was supposed to have been as dangerous as the super soldier.” X shrugged again. “But then they lost my formula in a submarine, so it was never used in the way that it was supposed to. Which leads me to my next question – where did you get the Mirakuru from?”

“Some man in a Halloween mask is trying to make an army in Starling City.” Xander replied.

X grinned widely. “Is there now? Well, isn’t that interesting?”

“I don’t know, is it?” Xander said, feeling rather confused.

“Oh, certainly.” X said mysteriously. He ambled away, returning a few seconds later with an armful of nets. “That will be all.”

~*~

When Xander got back to Starling City, there was a woman standing in his apartment.

She was wearing tight-fitting black and red leather, and there was a bow within easy reach. She had a knife at her belt, and Xander felt fairly sure that there were several others hidden on her person.

“Hello, Xander.” She said. She had a British accent.

“Have we met?” Xander scratched under his eyepatch absently. “I’m sure I would have remembered that.”

The woman smiled faintly, although it didn’t reach her eyes. “We haven’t. But we know about you and your organisation. Watcher.”

“Well, isn’t that nice.”

“We know about the Council. We know your members, your leadership, your bases. We know everything there is to know about you, and if you get in our way then we will send it crashing down. We’re here for Sara. Try and stop us, and we will end you.”

Xander lost his temper.

Xander rarely lost his temper. When he did, it was like a hot flash – the kind of emotion that had led him to driving his fist through a wall upon hearing that Joyce had died, for example. He blew up about something, and then he promptly cooled down. This wasn’t like that. This was cold, and slow, and it just kept building.

He threw a few cards at the woman, passing through her trousers to pin her legs to the wall behind her. Before she could react, he slammed into her side, his weight trapping one arm. He grabbed her free arm with one hand and, with his other, he wrapped his hand around her throat. “I’m having a bad week.” Xander said, in low, level voice. “My people are in hospital. I promised a girl that I’d keep her safe, and I couldn’t keep that promise. Someone’s drugged half the city, and I can't do anything about that. I’m stuck here waiting for an executive assistant to work up a cure. On top of that, one of my friends, one of the people that I picked to come here, is probably a traitor. And now there’s you, here, threatening me and people I care about. You don’t get to do that. You’re the one getting in my way. Now, I could snap your neck easily enough, but I don’t kill humans. In any case, if I did kill you, then there’d be no one to spread the message. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know who you work for, but if you threaten us again we will find you and nothing on Earth or any hell dimension you care to name will stop us from tearing you apart.” Xander smiled. “I’d ask you to nod if you understood, but you can’t really move, can you?”

He picked her up bodily by the neck, tearing her trousers as he pulled her free. She instantly reached for a dagger, but by that point Xander had already thrown her out of the window.

Xander dusted himself off. “Well, that was exciting.”

~*~

By that point, it was rather late at night. Not that that stopped Isabel from working, of course. It would take more than that to stop her.

However, her executive assistant had left, as had most of the staff. As such, there was no buffer between her and Xander, who was standing in her doorway. “Can I come in?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Isabel said flatly. She rubbed her shoulder absently – it had bruised from where Xander had grabbed her.

Xander, to her mild surprise, didn’t come in. He stayed standing in the doorway. “I came to apologise.”

“That’s nice.” Isabel turned back to her work, ostentatiously ignoring him.

“Do you gamble?” Xander said, after a few moments.

Isabel didn’t look up, and continued to ignore him.

“My dad used to gamble, before he figured out that drinking was a cheaper addiction. On the good days, when I was young, he’d teach me all these card games. I forgot most of them until a few years ago, when I spent some time living with a really bored and really annoying va- uh, Englishman. There’s this game, Blackjack. You get given two cards, and the closest to 21 wins, but if you go over you lose.. Face cards are worth ten, aces are 1 or 11 and the other cards are – but you probably don’t care. The thing is, you can ask the dealer to give you more cards, or you can stick with what you have. I always used to twist-“

“Twist?” Isabel said, figuring that Xander was going to stay there rambling no matter what she did, so she might as well try to understand.

“Uh, yeah. I think it’s a British thing. Twist or stick. Get another card or stay with what you have. Anyway, the point is, I used to keep twisting. I always asked to twist.” Xander sighed. “I guess this is my convoluted way of saying that I keep pushing at things, even if it’s not a good idea. Sometimes – maybe most of the time – it doesn’t work out. I believe what you said. It doesn’t make sense for you to rob your own company. And you don’t have to tell me why you stopped dancing.” Xander paused for a moment. “Just because I got to be what I wanted to be when I was young doesn’t mean that everyone can.”

Isabel looked at him for a long moment. “And what did you want to be when you were young?”

Xander shrugged and gave her a sheepish smile. “I wanted to be a superhero.”


	23. Chapter Twenty-Three

Felicity had been working around the clock to find something that counteracted Vertigo.

The good thing about that was that she had found something that counteracted Vertigo.

The bad thing was that she had been unable to make any headway on actually finding the Count. He was still there, making even more Vertigo. Unless he was stopped, whatever counteragent Felicity made wouldn’t be enough. The Count always tweak his recipe, and suddenly Felicity would be back at stage one.

On the other hand, now that she had the counteragent, they suddenly had a lot more people available. The counteragent worked almost immediately, which meant that they now had a squadron of Slayers to help them out. Of course, Felicity was somewhat confused by the Slayers. Oliver had told her briefly that they hunted demons, and had he seemed to expect her to understand what that meant.

Her confusion was somewhat reciprocated, because Xander didn’t understand how an executive assistant had the necessary expertise to counter a drug when most of the actual experts in the city were making now headway.

But that wasn’t important.

After Felicity had treated the Slayers, Xander filled them in on recent developments, including the weapons that X had made and the woman that he had thrown out of a window. After that, he asked to speak to Vi, Lizzie and Rose in private.

He started without any preamble. “One the Slayers is a traitor.”

“If I ask why you think that, are you going to start talking about how no one notices your genius detective work again?” Vi asked.

“Of course.”

Vi nodded, as though she had expected that. “Why do you think that?”

“Because I’m a genius detective. Why won’t you accept that already?”

Rose looked at the two of them. “Are you really having this conversation? He already told you what he was going to say.”

Xander sighed. “Ah, Rose. Obviously you don’t understand the value of good banter.”

“Not really. Especially not when you’ve just told me that someone I work with is a traitor.”

“Why _are_ you telling us, anyway?” Lizzie added.

“Remember when Oliver gave us a tip, and we went to go stop the bad guys only to find that they’d gotten the hell out of Dodge? Someone tipped them off.” Xander gestured at Rose and Lizzie. “I know it wasn’t either of you two, because you were out hunting Sara at the time. And I trust Vi. She was at Sunnydale, and she’s been with me since then.”

“Shannon was at Sunnydale too.” Vi pointed out. “And you picked the girls yourself.”

Xander nodded. “I’m pretty sure it isn’t Shannon. She isn’t the type. But then, I can't really trust anyone at the moment. But you’re my deputy, and if you were the traitor then the bad guys would be doing a lot better than they have been. For one thing, you know everything I know.”

“But if there’s a traitor, why did they have to capture Roy to find out where our base was?” Vi pointed out sensibly.

“I don’t think they did. I think that they captured Roy to get to Thea. Someone literally gave her a bullet with her name on it. Making it look like they needed him to find out where we were was just a bonus.”

“So – assuming you’re right, and someone is a traitor, what exactly do you want to do?” Rose said. “If _none_ of us have noticed someone acting… evil, then what exactly do you expect us to do about it? Chances are they won’t slip up now.”

“Well, you weren’t specifically looking before. Keep your eyes peeled, all that stuff.” Xander said. “Anyway, Vi, I want you to try and find Count Vertigo. See if you can find out who’s been supplying him stuff, as well. See if you can find a concrete link between him and Blood.” Xander held up a hand. “And before you start questioning my detective skills _again_ \- yes, it’s just a hunch. But it makes sense. Lizzie, I want you to keep an eye on Blood himself. I’ve got some sonic grenades and some nets – if he causes any trouble don’t hesitate to use them. Rose, you’re with me.”

“Where are we going?” Rose asked. 

~*~

“Hello, Officer.” Xander said cheerfully.

Lance wondered if he’d ever be able to have lunch without _something_ interrupting. “Xander. What is it this time? I don’t see any trucks nearby, so obviously you haven’t tied up the Count yet.”

“Your sarcasm is duly appreciated, but I’m here to talk to you about the incident with Officer Daily.”

“Yes, I thought you might be.” Lance sighed. “You know I can’t tell you anything, right?”

“Come now, Officer. I did tell you that there were dirty cops in your precinct. I’m just wondering why, out of all the people that Daily could have confessed to, why he chose you.”

“He was a madman, just like Merlyn was. He doesn’t have to have a reason.”

Xander narrowed his eyes. “Just like… Merlyn?”

“Haven’t you heard? It’s all over the news. He claimed to have worked for Merlyn before he died.”

“That’s interesting.” Xander mentally filed that away. “You were involved in the investigation into Merlyn. You helped the Hood take him down.”

“Got demoted for my troubles, too.”

“Okay. Officer, I have two questions. First, have you been looking into Blood? I asked you to keep an eye out for someone trying to make a power play after Altman was killed.”

“I can’t tell y-“

“Thought as much. Secondly, have you noticed that there are a lot less people on this street than there should be at this time of day? There’s hardly anyone here. On top of that, someone’s taken out the camera over there.”

Lance looked around. Now that Xander mentioned it, there weren’t nearly as many people around as he would expect. And no camera should be looking like the one that Xander had pointed out. “Okay. So what is this?”

Xander shrugged. “No idea.”

Suddenly, there were ninjas. They were dressed in the same way as the man that tried to kill Sara in her lair. They came out of alleyways. Several of them abseiled down from rooftops. Each of them had a bow on their backs and swords in their belts.

They were led by the woman that Xander had thrown out of a window.

“You again.” Xander said coldly. “Here for a rematch?”

“No.” She said, equally coldly. She pointed at Lance. “We’re here for him.”

Whatever might have been said next was interrupted by a tinkling sound, as a round, metallic sphere hit the ground and rolled to a stop by the woman’s feet. It then emitted a high pitched scream, which didn’t cause the reaction that Xander would have expected. While Lance doubled up and covered his ears, none of the ninjas reacted.

The woman suddenly had her bow in her hands, and she fired at Xander. He swept aside the arrow before he could even think about what he was doing, and he threw a card at her. The woman hurriedly dropped the bow, now useless. Xander had cut the string. Even though it had lashed out and cut her hand, the woman showed no signs of being in pain as she drew her sword.

Rose jumped down from the roof and landed on one of the ninjas.

She should have been overwhelmed in seconds. There were three reasons why she wasn’t.

Firstly, she threw one of X’s nets at the first person to approach her. There was a faint clicking sound, as though some cogs had shifted slightly, and the ninja stopped. He didn’t struggle, he didn’t even move – he just stood there in a precarious position that really should have led to him falling over. This made everyone else wary.

Secondly, she was small, and her back was against a wall. This meant that no one could shoot at her as she fought, and anyone attacking her wouldn’t be able to take advantage of their height or numbers.

Thirdly, she was really, really good at fighting, even by Slayer standards. Xander was aware that there were few Slayers who could match Rose – when she sparred with the others she knocked them down like skittles. While these ninjas were phenomenally well trained, better than most Slayers, Rose was stronger and faster than them. When Xander had first met her, she’d taken to combat like a duck to water. The ninjas held their own, for a time, and there was always another one to take their place but it was obvious that Rose was going to win.

And then there was the woman, their leader. She wasn’t fighting Rose. Xander knew that he could end this right then and there – while she might be a ninja, he didn’t think that she would survive a magic card to the chest. But he didn’t throw one at her – she was human, and he didn’t kill humans. Not even ninjas that he threw out of windows.

Plus, he wanted to physically attack her.

She was fast, he would grant her that, but her sword barely penetrated his skin. His muscles were dense enough to stop it before it did any damage. He grabbed it and _twisted_ , and it broke apart. But she already had a knife in her hand, and she was slashing towards his eye. Xander swayed to the side and kicked her knee – or tried to. She did some kind of acrobatic flip and rolled over his leg, before landing her own kick on his hip. His leg suddenly wasn’t where he had expected it to be, and he stumbled.

She went for his eye again, while he was off balance and she was in his blind spot. But Xander was already moving, he swivelled and crouched before lunging at her. She skipped away easily, before stooping and picking up a fragment of her shattered sword. She threw at Xander, and he dodged. Mostly. It skimmed across his face, cutting his eyepatch strap. It fluttered to ground, and Xander lost his temper.

He wasn’t quite sure what happened next.

The woman was on the ground, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Xander had his foot on her chest, and something that for all the world looked like part of a streetlight held against her throat. In his other hand, he was holding her dagger – it had blood on it, but he didn’t have the faintest idea whose blood it was.

“Who are you?” Xander said, tiredly.

The woman just glared at him, as though she wasn’t currently on the ground, at his mercy.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to. A voice behind her said “Nyssa, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, Heir to the Demon.”

Xander looked at Sara in surprise. “Heir to the what now? Are you saying she’s a demon?”

“Not exactly. It’s a long story.” Sara wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Nyssa, and Nyssa was looking at her. “I’m not going back with you, Nyssa.”

“You haven’t been released. If you don’t come back with us, your family will suffer.” Nyssa said.

“Threatening people I care about won’t bring me back to you.” Sara said matter-of-factly.

Xander looked at her. Then he looked at Nyssa. Then he looked at the sky, as thought it might hold answers as to what was going on. It didn’t. He gave a disgusted snort. “This has to be just about the most twisted lovers’ quarrel I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some pretty weird ones, let me tell you.”

He hit Nyssa over the head with his streetlight, and called to Rose “Hey, you got another net?”

“Yeah?” Rose called back.

“Net Sara, will you?”

There was another clicking sound, and Sara froze with a net around her.

Xander looked around to see a street full of unconscious ninjas. Lance was also unconscious, and he didn’t remember how that had happened. He called the Slayers to let them know what had happened, told them to sort things out – he got the feeling that the police couldn’t deal with the ninjas – and then he swung the unconscious Nyssa over his shoulder. He gestured for Rose to do the same to Sara.

~*~

Nyssa woke to find herself on her back, looking at… something. For all the world it looked like a jellyfish. She sat up to see that the walls and ceiling were covered with pink, faintly glowing crystals. Sara was sitting opposite her. Mutely, she handed Nyssa a piece of paper.

On it, it said:

_Xander Harris, Expert Relationship Counsellor, presents ‘How does that make you feel?’, the first workshop in his much awaited ‘Ninja Dating’ series.  
Talk to each other. Don’t touch the crystals. We’ll let you out when you’re not going to do something silly, like threatening family members.  
Have a nice time._


	24. Chapter Twenty-Four

When Lance woke up, he ached. Especially in his everything. He felt rather like a giant had been using him as a xylophone. He opened his eyes. Above him, not surprisingly, was a ceiling. He didn’t recognise it. It wasn’t a hospital ceiling, and it certainly wasn’t his. He tried to remember what had happened.

“Ah, Officer. You’re awake.”

Oh, that was right. Xander had come to talk to him, and then they’d been attacked by ninjas.

Lance craned his head forward, stifling a groan. He didn’t feel up to sitting. He was in a room. Not his. He was lying on a sofa, and Xander was sitting on a chair opposite. “What happened?”

“To you specifically?” Xander shrugged. “I don’t actually know. I was kind of… distracted. If you mean in general, then we fought off the ninjas and captured their leader. You’ve been unconscious for the whole day.”

“Ninjas.” Lance snorted. “Time was, the worst thing we had to worry about was some gangs in the Glade. Then Merlyn came along, and the Hood, and suddenly everything’s gone mad.”

“Right.” Xander said, carefully not mentioning that he’d gone to school on top of a place that made this city look like the epitome of sanity. “Anyway, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, if that’s okay.”

“Why am I here?” Lance asked suddenly. “Why aren’t-“

“Just because we stopped this group of ninjas doesn’t mean that they won't come back for you at some other time. I can keep an eye on you here. Now that you’re awake, you can go anywhere you like – but I'd be careful, if I were you. Now, about those questions…”

Lance wasn’t done asking his own. “Why were they after me?”

Xander nodded patiently. “Yes, good question. Now, if you don’t mind me asking… your daughter, Sara. Did you know that she’s a ninja?”

Lance wondered if he’d heard correctly. He must have had a blow to the head, or something, because there was simply no way that Xander had just asked that. “Can you say that again?”

“Sara. Ninja. Know anything?”

“No.” Lance said slowly, wondering if this was some kind of sick joke. “Sara died. She was on the same ship as Oliver, the one that went down. He was the only one who made it out alive.”

“Right. Because I did a bit of research while you were unconscious. Turns out that you have _two_ daughters. I met Laurel, briefly, when the priest tossed her around. But I’ve spent a bit more time with Sara, who, incidentally, is currently arguing with her girlfriend. In Arabic, I think. Her girlfriend, by the way, being the ninja who wanted to kidnap you.” Xander paused. “Going by your expression, I’m guessing that you didn’t know that she was gay. Or alive.”

“No.” Lance’s eyes were unfocused. “Are you-“

“Deadly serious. Got my serious face on, and everything. You can go and see her, if you want. Although she’s kind of in the middle of a lover’s quarrel right now.”

“Where is she?” Lance said. He felt as though there was a ball in his chest, one that had inflated so much that it was pressing up against his ribcage. He felt like there just wasn’t enough room for his lungs to inflate – he couldn’t take a full breath – and his heart was beating so hard that he felt like a metronome, but his mind wasn’t working. He wasn’t thinking. He couldn’t. His head was full of Sara, of all the things he’d like to say, all the things he’d always dreamt of saying. He couldn’t focus on the fact that she might actually be here, a person, solid. He couldn’t quite believe that she wasn’t just an idea. That he might be able to actually see her. 

“I’ll get someone to get her.” Xander said. He didn’t think that showing Lance to a room with a ninja in it was a good idea. Plus it would probably be better if Lance held off on meeting Nyssa just yet.

Before he could do any such thing, his phone rang. “Hey, Vi. What-“

“I’ve found the Count.” Vi interrupted.

“Where-“

“He just led a group of armed men into Queen Consolidated.”

“Oliver-“

“Can’t get there in time. He’s with his family – his mother was acquitted, you know – and by the time he’s made his excuses and got his costume on the Count would be long gone. Besides, you and Rose are the nearest.”

That was a fair point. The police almost certainly wouldn’t be much use, either – most of them were tied up by the massive amount of people who were protesting against the verdict. They wouldn’t be able to get themselves organised in time. “Right. Oh, Officer Lance is awake. He wants to see-”

“Yeah, yeah. Just go.”

“You don’t have to interrupt-“ Vi hung up.

Xander turned back to Lance. “Someone will turn up to take you to Sara in a bit. I have some more questions, but they’ll wait. Right now QC’s being raided.”

~*~

The lobby of the Queen Consolidated building wasn’t pretty. For one thing, there were half a dozen security guards scattered around the room. Most of them had been shot, but one of them had been thrown so hard against the wall that it had cracked the plaster. That meant that the Count had at least one Mirakuru soldier with him, and a fair few gunmen.

Of course, Xander didn’t know where they actually _were_. QC was a large building. Xander knew where Oliver’s office was, and Isabel’s, but that was about it. If the Count wanted to… do whatever he was doing, chances were he could do it without Xander finding him. Splitting up to look for clues wasn’t likely to be all that effective when there were only two of them searching a whole building.

Rose moved to the elevator, stared at it thoughtfully, and then pressed the ‘up’ button. “I remember this. From a dream.”

Well. That was convenient. “I don’t suppose you know which floor they’re on?”

Rose shook her head slowly. “Not yet. They’re in one of the labs, I think, but-“

“Hold on. I know where that is. There’s a whole a floor of them.” Xander had forgotten about them. He’d met Barry there. It also made sense for the Count to go there, too – Felicity had been the person to work up the treatment for Vertigo, and Queen Consolidated had taken the credit. Wrecking the labs was a good place to start, because then, when the Count tweaked his recipe, everyone would have to start from scratch to find a counteragent.

It turned out that the Count’s people had indeed gone to the Research and Development labs. They were proceeding to destroy them, along with anyone who happened to be working late.

The Count himself wasn’t there, though, which was odd. Going by the bombastic speech he’d broadcasted, Xander would have definitely thought that the Count was the type of person who would enjoy personally overseeing destruction. If he wasn’t there, then that must mean that he had some other plan. Vi had told him that he was in the building…

As Rose rolled one of the sonic grenades into the lab and proceeded to soundly thrash the gunmen who were reeling around in pain, Xander realised where he would be.

Queen Consolidated had ruined his plan to take over the city. He wouldn’t be able to use the ‘flu trucks again, so he wouldn’t be able to dose nearly as many people. So he’d want to ruin Queen Consolidated. Oliver wasn’t here, and neither were any other Queens, but Isabel would be. Even this late at night, she would still be working. And if he killed Isabel, then there’d probably be some repercussions – Isabel’s firm owned half of QC, and they might well pull out if Isabel was killed. Plus QC stock would plummet. Or at least Xander assumed it would – that was the kind of thing that people said in films and TV shows in circumstances like this, and that was about the extent of his knowledge of the business world.

Still, he knew where Isabel would be. Hopefully he wasn’t too late.

~*~

As it turned out, he wasn’t.

Oh, the Count had gotten there before him, but Isabel was still alive. She was constantly shivering, sweat was dripping from her face, her eyes were wide, her pupils were dilated and she was breathing heavily. Her arms were zip-tied to the chair. There also a fair few empty syringes on the table in front of her, and the Count himself was sitting behind her with a gun pressed against the back of her neck.

“Hello.” The Count drawled. He didn’t seem particularly bothered to be interrupted. “I heard you get out of the elevator. Come to join in the fun?”

“What have you done to her?” Xander said coldly.

“Oh, nothing much. I injected some amphetamines in one arm, some barbiturates in the other. My own concoction, of course. It’s not quite Vertigo, but it does have the benefit of not being quite so… treatable. I was hoping to make her heart pop, but I haven’t had enough time. _Yet_. Now, why don’t you be a good boy and leave before I shoot you _and_ her, hmm?”

Xander didn’t reply. He _wanted_ to throw a card at the Count, but he didn’t think that he could do it before the Count could pull the trigger. Ditto with a sonic grenade. If he had a net, he might have chanced it, but he didn’t. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The Count licked his lips and look amused. “Oh, really? Why not? What do you think you can do here?”

“Well, I’m going to stop you.” Xander said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You can’t shoot her.”

The Count frowned. “I can’t? Perhaps you’d better tell her that… or at least, you can _try_ … I don’t think that she’d hear you though. She’s a bit out of it. Chances are she wouldn’t even notice if I shot her. Shall we test that?”

“If you shoot her, what do you think is going to happen to you? The only reason you’re-“

“Breathing?” The Count interrupted excitedly. “Were you going to threaten me? Because we both know that you weren’t going to kill me. You didn’t kill Mathis. You had him in your hands, no one would have known… but you gave him to the police. So pardon me if I'm not frightened by your… well, I can hardly call them threats, can I?”

Xander’s eye narrowed, and the Count giggled grotesquely. “Oh, you didn’t think I knew about that? He told me all about you. About your… _principles_. You won’t kill me. Say what you like about the Hood – and believe me, I’ve said some choice things – but at least he got things done. So why don’t you stop playing this charade and run along home, hmm?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Xander’s voice was cold and flat.

“Well, then, I guess we-“ The Count stopped abruptly, a look of surprise crossing his face. The gun dropped from nerveless fingers. He put a trembling hand against his chest. It came away wet, and red. He toppled sideways.

There was a small hole in the window, with cracks rapidly radiating out from it. The window shattered well before the Count hit the ground, but for a brief second one might have been able to see something that looked like a bullet hole. This wasn’t much of a surprise, however, because that’s exactly what it was.

Xander rushed to window, looking for the shooter, but there was no one in sight. There were several buildings in range, plenty of windows, and there was simply no way that Xander could spot him.

So he snapped Isabel’s zip-ties. He carried her down to the lobby, where he called for an ambulance. By that time the police had arrived, and he gave his statement. They didn’t really believe him, until they saw the group of unconscious gunmen and Rose.

~*~

By the time Xander made his way back to his apartment, Lance was gone. Xander knew that the sensible thing would be to contact Vi and ask how his meeting with Sara had gone, as well as tell her exactly what had happened at QC. But he was tired. Too tired for that.

He'd asked Rose to come back with him, which she wasn't happy about. She wanted to look for the sniper, or at the very least fill in Vi. She didn't want to babysit him, and had told him so at great length. Xander hadn't replied. He'd been thankful that she’d stopped talking as she drove him home - as much as he disliked motorbikes, at least they made it difficult for conversation.

“Right.” Rose said grumpily. “You're home now. You haven't been shot at, there haven't been any ninjas. You're probably safe. Can I go now?”

“Rose.” Xander said tiredly. “Do you know why I asked you to come with me this morning, when we went to see Lance?”

In this situation, Vi would have made a crack about his detective skills. Rose just shrugged.

Xander sighed. “You know what Sara said. There's every possibility that the Mirakuru will turn me into a rage monster. She said it, X said it, and Oliver shot me the second I even mentioned the stuff. Whatever Mirakuru does to people, it's scary. It's designed to be scary.”

Rose nodded. Xander could tell that she was wondering why he was telling her this. After all, the priest had broken her arm. She knew first-hand what a person on Mirakuru could be like.

“So if I Hulk out, I need someone to stop me. I'm not talking nets, or sonic grenades. If I… I might hurt people, and I need someone who isn't going to try to talk me down, who will just stop me, right then and there.”

Rose interrupted before Xander could say anything else. “But you haven't. Even earlier, when you were fighting Nyssa, you could have killed her. But you didn't. You stopped.”

“The Count cut away Isabel’s sleeves, so that he could inject her. There were massive bruises on them. Hand-shaped bruises. I grabbed her, after the ballet. I hadn't even realised that I'd gripped her so tight. And today, with the Count…” Xander paused. “If he hadn't have had a gun on Isabel, I would have killed him.”

Rose looked at him quizzically. “So?”

“He's human, Rose. Well, technically. But he… tortured half the city. Even _children_. He hurt people that I care about. Afterwards, I thought that there was obviously someone who liked him enough to organise everything for him, chances were that he wasn't going to stay in prison - but that wasn't what I thought at the time. I just thought that he was in the way. This city is damaged, and if it's going to get better then we can't have people like the Count in it. I was so angry about everything he'd done… it was just like this cold fury that just kept building. I would have killed him.”

“But you didn't. He had Isabel at gunpoint, and you didn't risk it.”

“You don't understand. If someone else hadn't killed him first, I would have. Even if it put Isabel in danger. You’re not babysitting _me_. You’re babysitting everyone else.”


	25. Chapter Twenty-Five

Xander wasn’t woken by a phone call, which he appreciated. He _really_ needed to sleep. While it was true that someone in his line of work quickly got used to working without much sleep, he’d been very busy and sleep was much appreciated. He slept until around 10 AM, which was very late for him.

There were, however, messages on his phone. Thea had asked him to see her at the Verdant, although she hadn’t said why. He imagined that she wanted to yell at him about Oliver. Vi wanted to tell him something, but wanted to wait until she could see him in person. Xander wasn’t looking forward to that – if there was something that Vi felt that she couldn’t say over the phone, chances were that it was more than slightly unpleasant.

On top of that, Xander wanted to see Lance and talk to him about his daughter, and he really needed to speak to Oliver and learn exactly what he knew about Mirakuru.

It looked like he had a full day. On the other hand, he wasn’t going to have to deal with a drug outbreak, so he had that going for him.

Well. He _probably_ didn’t have to deal with a drug outbreak. This was Starling City, after all. It might not be quite as extreme as Sunnydale, but it was right up there.

~*~

“So.” Xander said, sitting at the bar. “I hear that you wanted to speak to me.”

Thea nodded. “I did.”

“I assume you're not banning me, then. It would be so cruel of you to invite me here only to kick me out again.”

“Would I do that?” Thea said, innocently. Then, more seriously, she said “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Oliver.”

“Shocking. Out of everything that you could possibly have said, I _never_ would have thought you were going to talk about that.” Xander said acidly.

“Are you capable of having a serious conversation?”

Xander shrugged. “I try not to.”

“Colour me surprised. Anyway, I wanted to…” She narrowed her eyes. “I wanted to thank you, I guess.”

“ _Really_? I mean, I know that I’m pretty magnificent, but I didn’t see that coming. Which particularly wonderful thing that I’ve done would you like to thank me for?”

“Telling me.”

“Oh. I probably should have guessed that, actually.”

Thea ignored him. “Since he got back, Oliver’s been… different. He acts like the same irresponsible party boy, but he’s not. There’s something… you can see he’s acting. And then there are those times when he just ups and vanishes – it makes sense. He’s actually a vigilante.”

“You sound like you don’t approve.”

“How can I? Everyone thought that the Hood died in the quake. I’ve seen his scars, and they were there from his island days. Going out every night… he’s going to get himself hurt. Just like Roy was.”

“How is Roy, by the way?” Xander said, trying to change the subject. He didn’t really want to get into the Queen family drama this early in the day. Even if it was closer to noon.

“Better. He hasn’t been going out at night for a whole now, and he’s recovering from the Vertigo thing. But I think that, since the trial is over, it’s probably only a matter before he starts again.”

“Do you know how I lost my eye, Thea?” Xander asked suddenly.

Thea looked both uncomfortable and thrown by the non-sequitur. “I assumed you were injured in the earthquake.”

“No. Back in my home town, there was this… man. He liked to hurt girls. He killed a few of my friends. We tried to stop him, but… he was too strong for us. He grabbed me, and…” He gestured at his face. “I’d make a joke about not running with scissors, but I just can’t see it right now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. Anyway, the point is that, when I think about that, there are a lot of things I think. I think about what would have happened if I’d been faster, if only I’d done something else. I’ve lived that night over and over, thinking about all the things that I could have done. But I never, _never_ wonder about what would have happened if I hadn't been there. It was the right thing to do. Even though it ended badly, even though people got hurt, it was the right thing to do. Because if we hadn’t tried, then no one would have. He would have kept on going, people would have kept on dying. Sure, the Hood – uh, Oliver didn’t quite stop Merlyn. But he stopped one of the machines from going off, when the police were useless. He saved hundreds of lives, even if he couldn’t save them all. Sometimes, people have to take a stand for the people who can’t.”

“Right. That’s a nice speech, very compelling, but he’s my _brother_. I don’t want him to get hurt. The police-“

“-can't do everything. Maybe you heard about Daily, the cop who says he worked for Merlyn? What about the other cops, the ones who demoted Officer Lance just because he tried to help Oliver save the city? I lost my eye, Thea, my _eye_ , but I would do it all over again if it saved someone else. I understand your point of view, I do, but it’s too small. All those people that Oliver targeted – you know that they were bad people, but the police couldn’t do anything. People would just keep on getting hurt unless someone stopped them. If you saw someone getting hurt, would you walk on by? Would you call the police, knowing that the guy would be long gone by the time he got there? Or would you do something? Would you step up? That’s the question, Thea. Your brother did. Roy wants to. But what about you?”

Thea’s mouth opened and shut silently. “I…”

Xander smiled faintly. “Just something to think about.”

~*~

Xander walked into the precinct and quickly saw Lance at his desk. “Morning, Officer. How was your family gathering yesterday?”

Lance paused, absently twirling a pen between his fingers as he thought. “She didn’t say much about what happened to her. Just that she fell in with a bad crowd, and that she… that she loved someone. But I didn’t care. She was there. Alive. That’s all that matters. So thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome.” Xander said, wondering how he could ask Lance exactly what had happened without seeming like he was prying. Of course, he _was_ prying… “Uh, what exactly did she say? She’s been… rather uncommunicative with us.”

“Nothing. She didn’t say who those ninjas were, or what she’d gotten involved in. That they were dangerous, and wouldn’t stop until they got her back.”

“We’re making progress on making sure they let her go.” Xander said. Of course, that relied on the assumption that Sara and Nyssa’s near-constant argument counted as progress. For all he knew, it was the prelude to some kind of all-out war. “Hopefully she’ll be back - properly back – soon.”

“I hope so.” Lance said fervently. Then he sighed. “Anyway. I’m guessing that you're not here to talk about Sara.”

Xander frowned. Actually, he had been. “Is there something else we should be talking about?”

“Well, the sniper for one.”

“Would you actually tell me anything, though? What happened to police principles or whatever it was?”

“You gave me back my daughter. I owe you for that.”

“Okay. Cool. I’ll take whatever I can get. So did you find the sniper, or…”

“No, but we did find something. The bullet was laced with curare.” Lance paused significantly.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me? I don’t even know what curare _is_.”

“It’s a poison. It’s also the signature of a world class assassin known as Deadshot.”

“Is he a zombie?” Xander said eagerly.

Lance blinked. “No… he shoots, and his target dies. Deadshot.”

“Oh, I thought… never mind.” Xander flushed slightly. “So, who is this guy, exactly, and why would he shoot the Count?”

“We don’t know why. But we’ve had some run-ins with him before. Last time he was in town, he tried to kill Malcolm Merlyn. Far as we can tell, he’s just about the only one who’s ever survived, thanks to the Hood. I bet he regretted it.”

“Really?” Xander paused. “But that doesn’t make sense. Why would you hire an assassin to kill the Count? There’s got to be better ways to deal with him. More efficient ones.”

“Exactly. The thinking is that he was called in to take out someone else, and then someone paid him to make a little detour.”

“So who’s the target?”

Lance shrugged. “The detectives on the case are thinking Moira Queen. She was found innocent of killing hundreds of people, and someone hired Deadshot to deal with Merlyn once before. Maybe someone wanted to sort out the remnants of the Undertaking and have some justice, or something.”

Xander narrowed his eye. “But you don’t think that.”

“Doesn’t make sense. The people who died were in the Glades. They don’t have the resources to hire someone like Deadshot, and while the rich folks around here might be filled with righteous anger, they just don’t have the motive to go for her. Plus, if you were going to kill Moira Queen, why would you also save the CEO of the company that she used to run?”

“Interesting. So we can expect someone to get, uh, shot dead soon?”

“Hopefully not. We’re looking into everyone who might be targets… they’re pretty thin on the ground right now, though. The Mayor’s dead, the Triad has been dealt with so they’re not going to be taking out anyone… still, we’ve got an alert out for him.”

“I’m sure that will solve everything. Anyway, speaking of mayors… when you looked into Blood, what did you find?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. He’s squeaky clean. He arranges blood drives, charity events… the Glades love him. Even if he wasn’t running unopposed, I wouldn’t fancy anyone’s chances.”

“Okay… so no reason why someone would send an assassin after him, then?”

“None whatsoever… why? Do you know something?”

“Not exactly. I had a hunch, but so far it hasn’t panned out. Anyway, I’d better be go-”

“There’s something else. After your… after the person who works for you knocked out all the Count’s men, we were moving them to holding when the transport was attacked. One man stood in the middle of the road and stopped it, and then he ripped off the doors as though they were nothing and proceeded to kill everyone inside. Including the Count’s men.”

Xander sighed. Another person on Mirakuru. He wondered exactly how many there were. He imagined that was what Vi had wanted to tell him. “I don’t suppose you got a good look at his face?”

“Nope. He was wearing a-“

“Halloween mask?”

“No, a hockey mask.”

“Huh.” Xander digested that. “Well, thanks. Live long and catch criminals.”

~*~

To Xander’s mild surprise, Queen Consolidated was a lot less of a mess than it had been earlier. It had been cleaned up, and decorators were busily fixing the damage. Soon it would look exactly as it had before. There wasn’t even police tape – he supposed that there didn’t need to be, when the people involved had been caught red handed.

He went up to Oliver’s office. Felicity and a black man that Xander didn’t recognise were in there, talking urgently. Xander, to his own surprise, knocked rather than walked right in. Oliver gestured for him to come in.

“I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“It’s fine.” Oliver said. “Xander, this is John Diggle, my driver-cum-bodyguard. He works with me. John, this is the person I told you about.”

“You have a bodyguard?” Xander said incredulously. He looked at Diggle. “What are you, some kind of demigod or something?”

Diggle smiled faintly. “Sadly, no.”

“Mirakuru, then? I can’t think why Starling’s favourite vigilante would need a bodyguard…”

“He doesn’t.” Diggle said, self-deprecatingly. “I’m just for show.”

“He’s saved my life more times than I can count.” Oliver said. “He doesn’t need… Mirakuru… to be a hero.” He almost spat the foreign word.

“Actually, while we’re on the subject, I wanted to ask you about the Mirakuru. You obviously know something about it, and Sara isn’t talking to me right now so I’d really like to know what you know.”

Diggle and Felicity, for some reason that Xander didn’t understand, just looked confused. Oliver, however, was expressionless. Xander got the distinct impression that he wasn’t _trying_ to be, but he was just so shocked that he didn’t even have the presence of mind to have some kind of expression. “Sara?” He said in a quiet, flat voice.

“You know, blonde, about yay high, dresses all in leather? Sara. The one who was on the ship with you?”

“Isn’t she dead?” Felicity said, puzzled. “I’m sure she was dead. I mean, I know there’s a female vigilante, but she’s probably not a Sara, unless Sara isn’t really dead. I suppose she could be a vampire – apparently those exist – but-”

“Felicity.” Diggle interrupted gently.

“Right. Sorry.”

“I saw Sara die.” Oliver said, in the same flat, quiet voice. “I saw her die.”

Now it was Xander’s turn to be confused. He had been certain that Sara had been working with Oliver. He had thought that they’d been together when the priest had attacked Verdant – Sara had attacked him, and then Oliver had shot him with an exploding arrow while he was distracted.

Of course, Oliver had said that he hadn't been there, but Xander hadn’t believed him. But there was no reason for him to lie now, and he seemed genuinely shocked. So that meant that Oliver had really thought that Sara was dead, and somewhere in the city there was another vigilante archer or some description.

“Well, uh, she didn’t.” Xander said lamely. “I can bring you to her, if you like.”

Oliver paused, then glanced at Diggle. “Where is she?”

“Safe. And not going anywhere.”

“I can’t. I can't see her yet. There’s something-“

“Go. I can wait.” Diggle said gently.

“No. This needs to be dealt with. I can… I can see her later.”

“I’m missing something here, aren’t I?”

Oliver looked at him briefly. “Have you heard of Deadshot?”

“The man who was going to kill Merlyn before you saved him? Sure.” Xander said, being careful not the let on that he’d only known about him for the last hour or so. “I heard he’s in town.”

“He killed my brother.” Diggle said bluntly.

“Right. Okay. I’ll get my people to start looking for him-“

“You won’t find him. Not until it’s time for him to take out his target. He’s a ghost.”

“Still. Can’t hurt to look. I don’t suppose you know who his target is?”

“I’m looking.” Felicity said. “I wrote an algorithm to sort out potential targets. It’s running now.”

“Good. Anyway, about the Mirakuru… you can tell me some other time. I’ll go and get the search parties organised.”

~*~

“What time do you call this?” Vi said, with her hands on her hips.

“Nothing. I don’t name the time. What kind of person names the time? I mean, sure, the days of the week have names, but I don’t think ‘Oh, it’s seven. Let’s name seven Phil’. That would just be silly.”

“And we all know that you’re never silly.”

“Oh, I’m _always_ silly. Just not that silly.” Xander grinned briefly. “Anyway, I know that you wanted to talk to me about something. Did you have something to tell me that wasn’t about a police transport being massacred or an assassin?”

“Yes. Guess who’s announced that he’s making a public speech, denouncing the people who attacked QC and protested Moira Queen’s verdict?”

“Uh… Andrew?”

“And you say you’re not that silly. It was Blood.”

“Right. And if you’re going to assassinate someone, a public place like that would be perfect. I’ll tell Oliver.” Xander said. Of course, it was perfectly possible that he was wrong and there was no reason anyone would want Blood dead, but it was the best lead they had. “Oh, and send out the search parties.”

“Already doing that.”

“Maybe we can find this infamous assassin, catch him, and make him say ‘I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids’.”

“So, for future reference, what amount of silly is too silly?”


	26. Chapter Twenty-Six

The good thing about Blood having his speech in the Glades was that there weren’t many places he could be. Most places were still, months later, being rebuilt. Of course, Xander had arranged most of the rebuilding, but there was only so much that knowing a bunch of construction crews could get you. On top of that, none of the places that _were_ around were that big. That meant that he didn’t need to bring many Slayers along, which was good because he still wasn’t entirely sure which ones he could trust. It also meant that there were less places that a sniper could be.

The bad thing about the speech being held in the Glades was that the security on the buildings around the square was _terrible_. In fact, calling it terrible would probably be an understatement. In most cases it wasn’t even there. Of course, the SCPD was out in force, protecting Blood, but Xander strongly doubted that any of them would be able to stop a world-class assassin if he showed up.

So, protecting Blood from an assassin which may or may not even have been targeting him, there were only five people; Vi, Rose, Lizzie, Sofia and Xander himself. Xander had brought Sofia along because she had been unconscious during their failed raid, and so couldn’t possibly have given anyone any information. He wasn’t sure who else he could trust.

“If you were an assassin, where would you be? And if you mention something about Renaissance Italy, so help me, I will ban your video games. I don’t care if you say it improves your reflexes.”

Rose tilted her head. She looked confused. “What?”

“You know, Assassin’s Creed? Never mind. So, the assassin? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?” Seeing Rose’s confused expression again, Xander decided that he would stay away from the references for a bit, and sometime later when there was less going on he would strap Rose down and force some pop culture into her.

“I’d be over there.” Lizzie said, gesturing to a building. It looked much like all the other buildings.

Xander looked at it. He couldn’t see anything about it that distinguished it from the other buildings. “Want to share?”

“Because sharing is caring.” Vi added. When Xander looked at her, she shrugged. “Can't let you make all the references, can I?”

“Because those buildings have too much tree in the way, that one actually has a few security cameras – I think it’s some kind of financial building – and I don’t think an assassin would want to be seen. He can't go directly behind where Blood is because he’s undercover there, which means that he would be over there. It’s residential, so it should be pretty easy for him to get in, and it would get him a clear shot.”

“You're scary. Do you know that?”

Lizzie flushed slightly. “I like throwing things. I'm good at it. Shooting someone is close enough – with Slayer strength, I could probably hit him from up there.”

“Okay then. I’ll be up there, on the roof. Lizzie, you can be a stone’s throw away – if you see someone up there who isn’t me, throw something at him. Sofia, you go across the square and keep an eye on the windows. If you see someone with a great big gun… oh, you know. Rose, you stick near Blood. If something happens, you can tackle him or something. Vi, you… I don’t know, stand by the door or something.”

“I think I can manage that.”

“Sarcasm duly noted. Oh, before I forget – Oliver and his bodyguard will be showing up later, when the speech actually starts. They know what they’re doing, so we should have this little shindig covered between us.”

“I don’t suppose you can ask _him_ to lurk in the doorway too?” Vi suggested.

“Ask him yourself. You can ask him to a night of lurking. He seems like the sort of person who’d say yes.”

Vi looked thoughtful.

~*~

The speech itself was kind of boring. Or at least, Xander assumed it was. He tuned out most of it. It seemed like standard political stuff, the kind of thing that the Mayor had always said right before he’d turned into a giant snake.

It was also an uneventful speech. There was a distinct lack of sniper.

On the other hand, Oliver had given him and the girls some earpieces, so that they could talk to each other without having to pick up a phone. It was a good idea, and probably something that he should have looked into.

Of course, it meant that he had to listen to Vi ask Oliver about Lian Yu, and listen to Oliver’s stunningly brief responses, but that was just something else for him to tune out.

There was still no sniper.

~*~

Moira Queen was thoroughly enjoying her freedom. She felt somewhat guilty about that – she hadn't thought that there was even a chance that she was going to be acquitted. She still didn’t really understand why she had been. There were plenty of people around her house who also didn’t understand, and were rather vocal in their incomprehension.

But still, it felt good to be back home. To have space. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to have space, after having spent months in a tiny cell. And Thea was there, with her. She’d thought that she would lose her, lose both her children, when the revelation that she’d had an affair with Merlyn twenty years ago had come to light. But she hadn’t.

She felt almost unbelievably lucky. She put her cup to the mouth and took a sip of tea to hide the smile that just wouldn’t keep off her face. She needn’t have bothered, because the look on Thea’s face was almost exactly the same. She wished that Oliver could have been there.

There was a sharp crack, and Thea whirled around to see what it was. She was just in time to see a pane of glass shatter into thousands of pieces. She froze, and she almost missed the much smaller sound of a teacup smashing on the floor.

Almost. She turned back to see her mother on the floor, the shattered remnants of a teacup by her side, blood everywhere and a smile frozen on her face.

Thea screamed.

~*~

Vi was in the middle of asking Oliver a question about toilet paper that Xander was definitely going to be bringing up at every possible opportunity when Felicity’s voice came over the coms. “Uh, Oliver? Something’s just come over the police dispatch. Apparently there’s been a shooting.”

“Where?”

Felicity paused. “Um. Your house. It’s your mother…”

Oliver was moving before Felicity even finished. “Digg, with me. Make sure Thea’s safe. I’ll go to the hospital. Xander, you stay here – this might be a distraction, to pull the police away from here.” Sure enough, some of the police had apparently got the news, judging by the way they were milling around.

“Like hell I’m staying here. You get your mother, Diggle can get Thea. I’m going for Deadshot.”

“Fine.” Oliver replied. He wasn’t in a position to argue – in fact he was basically already gone. By the time Xander got down from the roof and had made his way through the crowds, he _was_ gone.

Xander headed down an alley way, moving towards his car. Everything was congested – the Glades weren’t traffic friendly these days, and there had been a good turn-out for Blood’s speech. He’d had to park far away. At times like this he wished he could drive a motorcycle. Of course, only having one eye meant that was a bad idea.

Of course, if he could drive a motorbike, then he wouldn’t have been confronted by a young man with a knife. “Give me your money.”

Xander blinked, incredulous. He knew that the Glades were hardly the safest of areas, but he’d never run into any problems. Probably due to being a big man with an eyepatch. This was terrible timing. He pushed past the other man, completely ignoring his knife. “I don’t have time for this.”

The man grabbed Xander’s arm and said “You’d better make time, then.”

Xander moved his arm, easily breaking out of the other’s man’s grip, and he pushed him hard in the chest.

Rather harder than he had intended to, in fact. He wasn’t entirely used to being strong yet. Xander had intended to push him hard enough that he would stagger backwards, and by the time his assailant found his feet Xander would be long gone.

In actuality, the mugger’s feet physically left the ground, and he skidded most of the way down the alley. Xander paused in surprise, then turned to go. He really didn’t have time for this.

As a result, he completely missed seeing the mugger pull out a gun and fire twice.

They were small calibre bullets, and Xander’s muscles were a lot denser since the Mirakuru, so it didn’t penetrate very much, but ithurt. It felt something like getting hit by a sledgehammer, twice in quick succession.

He turned around. His first thought was to pick up the man by his collar, slam him against the wall, and tell him that if he didn’t go straight then he, Xander, would come back for him. His second thought was that the man was in his way. Chances were fairly high that Xander had arranged some kind of accommodation for the man, and this was how he was repaid. Xander was on his way to help to save lives, to do hisjob and this man was in his way. He couldn’t do help people if they were like this. In fact, hestopped people like this. Everything would be better if there wasn’t someone else getting in his way, making it just a little bit harder to clean the city up.

Before Xander had a chance to think that that was the kind of thinking that had led Merlyn to destroy most of the Glades in the first place, there was a playing card in his hand, in the air, in the other man’s chest.

~*~

“The bullet didn’t cause any major damage. It passed clean through her shoulder.” The doctor told Oliver. “The problem is that it was laced with… something.”

Oliver didn’t look at the doctor. He couldn’t take his eyes off of his mother. Moira was awake, apparently. Her eyes were open. But she didn’t give any indication that she knew that there were other people around. There was a smile on her face, the same smile that had been there when she was first brought in. She seemed…frozen. “What was it?”

“We’re not sure. It’s close to Vertigo, but not quite. It appears to create an affect like locked-in syndrome. It also bonds with the pain centres in the brain, like Vertigo did. The treatment your company worked up doesn’t seem to be having any effect, though.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Oliver said quietly. He could ask Felicity to make a new treatment. Of course, with his labs smashed by the Count’s men, that would take time, but Moira seemed stable. Meanwhile, he could go hunting for Deadshot and whoever had paid him, andforce them to give him the cure.

He went left the room to see Thea, and almost walked right into someone carrying a bouquet of flowers. “Delivery for Mrs Queen.”

“Thank you.” Oliver said absently. While the courier nodded and left, Oliver looked at the note attached to the flowers.

It wasn’t signed, but it didn’t need to be. Oliver knew exactly who had sent them.

He dropped them turning, running back into the room, but he was too late. The doctor was on the floor, dead with an arrow in his chest, and his mother was gone.

Oliver stood there blankly, unable to think about anything other than the contents of the note.

_I keep my promises, kid._


	27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

Oliver wasn’t good at small talk.

He had been, once. Years and years ago, before the island. Even these days, he could be charming, pretend to be the same as the young party animal that he had been all those years ago, but it was just a mask. He wasn’t even sure how convincing it was. Most of the time he had too much to do, too many villains to stop to bother with small talk.

Sometimes, not being good at small talk was a comfort. For example, on the other side of the door in front of him was Sara Lance, someone that he had thought was dead for years. He’d blamed himself for her death for years. But he couldn’t just go in there and ask how she was, what she’d been doing all these years. He couldn’t drop his guard. Apparently the other woman in there was some kind of ninja, and besides, Slade was still alive and had his mother. He just didn’t have the time.

Even so, when he opened the door, bow in hand ready to fire if Nyssa tried anything, he almost forgot what he was actually going to say when he saw Sara. She was standing with her side to him – he thought for a moment that she was making his target smaller, but he quickly realised that she was actually preparing herself in case Nyssa made a move. Given that Nyssa was sitting cross-legged on the floor, he wasn’t sure what kind of move that would be, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

“Hello, Oliver.” Sara said, her voice carefully calm.

“Slade’s alive.” Oliver said, without preamble. He had meant to say that earlier, before Sara had a chance to speak, but actually seeing there alive had made him forget. It was one thing to know that she was alive, but something else entirely to see her. He found that he’d forgotten exactly what her voice sounded like.

Sara stiffened. “How? I assumed... how can both of you be alive?”

“I thought I’d killed him. When you were washed overboard, I thought you were dead, that because of him you’d... I had him. I put an arrow through his eye. He should have died. I don’t know how he’s alive, or where he’s been all these years, but... he’s alive. The Mirakuru has to be because of him. He has Mom, Sara. He injected her with something, a version of Vertigo, and he took her.” Oliver paused. He would have liked to have drawn a deep, steadying breath, but he couldn’t afford to show any weakness. He was afraid that he might have already given away too much.

“I’ll help you.” Sara said, without hesitation. “There’s no reason he’d think I’m alive. If Xander’s people will let me out of here, I’ll help you.”

“We will also.” Nyssa said suddenly.

“What?” Sara said.

“You’ve told me about Slade before. I know what he is to you. If he is everything that you say, then you will need all the help that you can get. The League doesn’t need an army of insane super soldiers loose in the world.” Nyssa smiled. “In any case, then Ta-er al-Usfar will be in my debt once again.”

Oliver and Sara spoke at the same time. “League?” “If you stop Slade and keep my family safe, I’ll go back with you.”

Nyssa’s smile widened when she heard Sara, but she otherwise gave no indication that she had heard her. She stood carefully, making it abundantly, almost insultingly, clear that she wasn’t threatening anyone.

Before that, Oliver hadn’t paid much attention to what she was wearing. He had looked at her face, to see if he knew her (he didn’t), and an automatic check to see if she had any weapons (she didn’t). Beyond that, he’d noticed that her description as a ninja seemed fairly accurate and left it at that. It was only when she stood up that he realised that he _had_ seen someone dressed like her before. She wore the same sort of clothes that Merlyn had.

“Haven’t you heard about the League of Assassins, Oliver Queen? We’ve certainly heard of you. We know about your... antics here over the last year. We know about what you did in China. We know about Shrieve.”

Of course Oliver had heard of the League of Assassins. In certain circles, they were rumours. They came in like ghosts, superbly skilled. They always found their target, they always killed, and then they melted away. There were stories, nothing solid – how could there be? They were too skilled to be caught, too powerful to be tracked. Word was that they had an army, resources around the world. No one knew the truth. Oliver had never believed that they existed. They had been a fairy story, and for someone who had seen the things that he had, that was saying something. He’d never thought they were actually real.

“Merlyn was one of you.”

Nyssa inclined her head. “He was, briefly. You know how skilled he was. Imagine what it would be like fighting someone who has been with the League their entire lives? Do you think that Slade could stand against us?”

Oliver carefully didn’t point out that Mirakuru made people very difficult to stop, and that Xander had put her in that room in the first place. He didn’t want to antagonise a myth. Especially not a myth with an army that was offering support. If Slade was building an army of Mirakuru soldiers, then he needed all the help that he could get. Even if he didn’t trust them, even if they had some kind of power of Sara that he didn’t like. He needed help.

“Fine. Come on. I’ll brief you on what’s been going on while we go to Verdant. There’s some... people there that are going to help too. We’ll come up with a plan.”

~*~

The journey to Verdant was incredibly awkward. Not least because Oliver avoided asking Sara about anything that she had been through during the last five years. Having Nyssa along didn’t really help matters.

Of course, when the trio actually went into Verdant, all of that went out the window.

Rose was sitting on a stool, incredibly still. Judging by the way that she was sitting, being motionless was neither comfortable nor voluntary. It almost certainly had something to do with the small metallic object embedded in her neck.

Thea was also sitting on a stool, and she looked terrified. That might have had something to do with the fact that the latest Slayer that Xander had set to guard her after someone had slipped a bullet with her name on it into her pocket was sitting defenceless next to her.

It might also have something to do with the fact that Malcolm Merlyn, the man who had destroyed most of the Glades, was sitting opposite her, a sword openly placed on the table between them. For a man that Oliver was sure that he had killed, he looked remarkably alive. He was also wearing the same sort of clothes as Nyssa was, but a quick glance at her told Oliver that she was just as surprised by this as he was. Xander wasn’t anywhere to be seen, although he should have been.

Merlyn smiled cheerfully and waved at Oliver. It was the same smile that he had used to have in the long ago days when he was just the father of Oliver’s childhood friend. It even looked genuine, but it was belied more than a little by the fact that he kept his hand on the sword on the table. “Hello, Ollie. Good to see you. Nyssa, Sara, I’m surprised you’re here. Don’t mind me. I’m just having some quality time with my daughter.”

As if the entire situation wasn’t incongruous enough. Oliver’s mind froze when Merlyn said that last word. He would have _liked_ to believe that Merlyn was talking about Rose – at that moment, he would have liked nothing more – but Merlyn had gestured at Thea when he had said it. And, of course, Merlyn _had_ had an affair with Moira a couple of decades ago, as the trial had proved. It wasn’t hard to do the maths. Thea was the right age. Even now, seeing them together, Oliver could see the resemblance. They had the same hair colour, the same eyes...

“Oh, one more thing.” Merlyn said, almost as an afterthought. “I have your mother. I didn’t want anyone else making an attempt on her life. You won’t find her, of course, but no one else will either. Don’t worry about that. I haven’t managed to work up a counteragent for whatever she was given yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

Oliver shouldn’t have been relieved, he knew. Merlyn was incredibly dangerous. But it was better, much better, to know that his mom was in Merlyn’s hands, especially given that she was apparently the mother of his child, and he had no reason to hurt her. If Slade had her, it wouldn’t have surprised Oliver if giving Moira Vertigo would be the least of things that Slade would do.

Merlyn stood. “See you soon. Don’t try to follow me.” He turned to Thea, and to Oliver’s overwhelming surprise his expression was almost tender. “It was good to speak to you. I’m sorry for frightening you.”

Thea didn’t say anything. Oliver didn’t know if it was because she was scared, or if she simply didn’t know how to respond to that.

Several smoke bombs went off at once, and by the time that the smoke had thinned a little Merlyn was gone.

Xander walked through the door. “Sorry I’m late, I had to clear something up.” Then he seemed to realise that something strange had happened, and he added “Did I miss something?”


	28. Chapter Twenty-Eight

Xander wasn’t squeamish. He’d never been particularly squeamish to begin with, and after having spent years working with Slayers even that last residual remnant of squeamishness has been drummed out of him. He’d seen too many demons oozing gooey, stinking blood and too many Slayers coming home bleeding.

He’d also never killed someone before. Oh sure, he’d killed a few vampires, helped out with the odd demon here and there, but he’d never killed a human before. It just wasn’t something that he did. It wasn’t something that _anyone_ at the Council did, not anymore. 

Still, there was a dead man, and Xander had killed him. Xander had thrown a magical playing card right into the man’s chest, and he wasn’t breathing and there was so much blood. He hadn’t even thought about throwing it – the card had been in the air before he had even realised.

He didn’t think about vomiting, either. He just doubled up automatically and then it just happened. At that point, he wasn’t even capable of thinking at all.

After a while, he straightened and looked at the body again. He needed to be practical about this. He was in an alleyway in a public place. Someone might come along, and then... he didn’t know what would happen then.

Okay. This was the Glades. The Glades were generally pretty empty, and everyone was probably at Blood’s speech anyway. It wasn’t likely that some random civilian would appear. Oliver and Diggle had left in the opposite direction. Sofia and Lizzie would stay watching Blood, in case it was a distraction. That left Vi and Rose. Rose had a motorbike, and was parked nearer to the speech anyway. By now, she had probably gone off to wherever she thought was best – after Deadshot, most likely. Vi... well, Xander wasn’t sure where Vi would go. Maybe she’d hitch a ride with Oliver and Diggle, or with Rose, or maybe she’d come after Xander so that they could talk about what they were going to do.

In which case she might be here any moment.

He had to get rid of the body. The blood wasn’t an issue – people died in the Glades all the time, and crime was up since Merlyn’s machine had gone off. But if the police had the body, they could figure out how the man had died, and once they got a report it was only a matter of time before someone figured out that Xander had done it, and then they’d shove him down in the wine cellar until they worked out how to flush the Mirakuru out of his system. Normally he’d be fine with that, but there was too much going on at the moment, too many threats – with other Mirakuru soldiers out there, they needed all the help they could get. And he wasn’t a liability, or at least not much of one, not yet. He could still help.

He just needed to get rid of the body.

That was why Xander took so long to get to Verdant. Why he was wearing new clothes, because he had blood and a couple of bullet holes in the set that he’d been wearing. That was why he was grateful that Merlyn had shown up, and that everyone was focused on Thea who was telling them exactly what Merlyn had said. If they were focused on Thea, then that meant that they didn’t have the mental focus to spare in order to notice his different clothes. They also didn’t ask why he was late, which he was intensely grateful for, because he didn’t even have the slightest idea how to explain himself.

When it turned out that Merlyn had shut Diggle and Felicity into Oliver’s secret lair beneath the club, and Vi hadn’t shown up at all, Xander began to think that maybe no one would ask him at all, not with so much stuff going on.

~*~

Vi hadn’t gone after Deadshot, hadn’t gone anywhere with Rose or Oliver, hadn’t stayed with Lizzie and Sofia. The reason that she hadn’t gone to Verdant had nothing to do with ninjas or Mirakuru soldiers or anything like that. She just thought that there was somewhere more useful for her to be.

She found Isabel in hospital, where she had expected her to be. Even though she looked pale and waxy, and had enormous bruises on her arms and some kind of IV drip attached to her arm, Isabel was still working. Someone had given her a file that she was reading, and there was a laptop open next to her showing some kind of financial data.

Vi hesitated briefly before going in, trying to marshal her thoughts. Before she had a chance to do so, however, Isabel looked up at her and frowned. Vi, realising that there wasn’t really much of a point delaying, went inside.

“You work with Xander, don’t you?” Isabel said. Her voice wasn’t very strong, and it was rough and raspy.

Vi nodded. Technically, they’d never met each other, but it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. “Yes. I’m Vi.”

“What do you want?”

“I have... a question.”

“Why?” Isabel croaked. “Xander was there, I think. He saw...”

“Not about the Count. I wanted to ask you about Queen Consolidated.”

“I don’t think now’s really a good time.”

Vi shrugged. “Actually, I think it is. I think now is exactly the time.”

“I _can_ call a nurse, you know. Have you escorted out. I don’t think you’d make a scene in a hospital, and I don’t think they’d take kindly to you harassing a patient.”

“Sure you can. But I don’t trust you anyway, and having me kicked out isn’t the best way to make me start trusting you, is it?”

Isabel rolled her eyes. It seemed to take some effort. “What now. You think because I couldn’t stop some madman from pumping me full of drugs that I must be evil, is that it? Or do you think that I have a sniper on retainer, just in case? You people have been spouting crackpot theories at me for-“ Isabel broke off as she started coughing. It went on for some time.

“I did some digging into you, a while ago. When you said that you used to be a dancer, and when you’re... counter-espionage tactics... let you slip our watch. And yes, I found that you were telling the truth, that you did used to dance. But I also found something else. I mean, I’m no business expert, but I know people who know some things and I’m pretty sure I’ve got this right.” Vi paused briefly. “Stellmoor guts companies. That’s what your company does, it grabs companies when they’re not doing so well, and then it guts them. Except you couldn’t do that with Queen Consolidated, because Oliver owns half of it, he won’t let you just take it to pieces like that.”

“So?” Isabel managed to rasp.

“So you’re forced to get it back on its feet. I looked at the stock prices. Looks like QC has been pretty much rock bottom. Only, the thing is... when Moira Queen was found innocent, it went up. Not much, just a little bit, but more than it has so far. And it rocketed up when QC released the treatment for Vertigo. Except then it got broken into. People died. The person who’s actually running QC – and you’ve made _sure_ that everyone knows that it’s you – nearly gets killed. And then Moira ends up shot in her own house. People were already thinking that she wasn’t innocent, there were people protesting the verdict, but they’re people from the Glades, they aren’t the sort of people that have the resources to hire a sniper, they aren’t even the kind of people that anyone around her listens to. No one, no one important, would care that their protesting. But then all of a sudden Moira gets shot and I’m going to bet that people, powerful people will start to take notice. Maybe they’d notice that the Count was standing between you and the window, so that there was no clear shot, and that the sniper didn’t take a shot at all until it looked like maybe the Count wasn’t going to have a chance to kill you himself. Maybe they’d think that someone has a vendetta against the Queen family and their company – I mean someone already attacked Thea.” 

Vi smiled. “Maybe someone would think that, if they didn’t know that the Count and his men went to two places, and two places only. They went to the lab, where the counteragent was made, and they went to your office. They went straight there. Almost like someone had told them, don’t you think? Just like someone told the bad guys that we knew about the sugar factory, so they could clear out.”

Isabel looked thoroughly confused. “Why do you think I-“

“No idea. Seems like a lot of risks, and as far as I can tell all you get out of it is the possibility that Oliver will pull out of the company and then Stellmoor can gut it. Doesn’t seem worth it. But you’re doing something, I’m sure of that. I don’t buy the idea that you’ve sold Xander on, that you’re just some ex-dancer who happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. So the question is... how do you benefit?”

Before Isabel had a chance to reply, Vi was gone.

 

~*~

“So let me get this straight.” Xander said. “When you were shipwrecked on the island, you weren’t alone. There was this group of mercenaries who were going to shoot down a plane to wreck the Chinese economy, and a Chinese guy with a bow who was going to take the blame, his daughter who the mercenaries were holding captive so that they could blackmail the Chinese guy in the first place, and... an Australian secret agent who liked to use swords.”

Oliver nodded.

“And so, once they got everything they wanted from the Chinese guy, they killed him. After a while, you, his daughter... Shado? And the Australian guy, Slade, managed to stop them blowing up the plane. Except you were stuck on the island. Then you fell in love with Shado and so did Slade, except you didn’t know and he didn’t say anything because she fell in love with you.”

Xander spun around and pointed at Sara. “And then you turned up, miraculously not drowned and working with some lunatic scientist looking for Mirakuru, an invention made for the Japanese in World War Two, the only supply of which ended up on Lian Yu. Which you then found, gave to Slade when he got injured, and then Shado got killed because you, Ollie, chose to save Sara instead. Slade went crazy and swore revenge... and after a bit you stabbed him in the eye with an arrow when you thought Sara had died. Again.”

“Am I only one who think that sounds just the teensiest bit... weird?” Thea said. “I mean, mercenaries, super soldier serum, mad scientists on boats... and Sara’s _alive_?”

“Hmm?” Xander said absently. “Oh, no, that sounds like an average day for me. We’re good at weird. So Slade’s here, causing trouble, raising an army, and you want to stop him.”

“If we can find him.” Oliver said simply.

“I think I can help with that.” Xander grinned. “I know someone who’s _really_ good at finding things.”

“How?” Felicity said. She sounded irritated about something.

“Magic.”

Thea snorted. When everyone else looked perfectly serious, she frowned. “What? It’s just... you know, card tricks, that sort of thing.”

“I wish.” Xander said, standing. “If you give me a minute, I need to go make a phone call.”

~*~

“Hey, Xander.” Willow said. She sounded tense, and tired. Xander wondered if he was calling at a bad time, but given that Willow had picked up in the first place he figured it was probably okay.

“Hey, Will. Listen, can you find someone for me?”

“We talking magically, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Of course.”

“Well, there’s a bit of a problem with that.” Willow sighed noisily. “Magic isn’t really around anymore. Since the particle accelerator blew, it’s kind of... been going away. Things that were magical to begin with, you know, like Slayers and demons, they’re fine. But there’s less magic to cast spells. Some of the weaker witches can’t cast at all any more. Whatever happened when S.T.A.R. Labs went boom, it did something to magic.”


	29. Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Right.” Xander said slowly. “Are you _sure_ it’s the particle accelerator that did it?”

“Well, no, but it happened right after it blew. There’s talk about it releasing all sorts of exotic particles – who knows if they affected magic? I mean, it’s not like there’s precedent or anything.” Willow replied. “Why? What do you think it is?”

“Glory.”

“ _What?_ Why? Glory was magical herself, why would she want to mess with magic? Besides, she’s dead. Not to mention the fact that everyone’s saying it was an accident, and Glory wasn’t exactly subtle. If it was her then there’d probably be a Glory-shaped hole where she walked through the accelerator.”

“Yeah, I know she’s _supposed_ to be dead, but something moving at super speed killed Barry’s mother when he was a child, and the same thing whisked Barry away to Central City right before S.T.A.R. Labs exploded. Obviously someone has plans for him, and I can’t think of anyone else who moves as fast as Glory.”

“Fair point.” Willow conceded. There were plenty of demons that were capable of putting on a burst of speed, but nothing like Glory. Certainly none of them were capable of running all the way from Starling to Central City, not that fast. “Still, even if it is her – and I don’t think it is – I don’t know why she’d do it. I mean, sure, the explosion created all sorts of weird stuff, but none of it is mystical Key-like stuff.”

“I don’t know, Will, but it’s the only thing I can think of.” Xander replied. “But, anyway – definitely no tracking spell, then?”

“Doesn’t look like it. I’m trying to figure out how to make magical items so that we have _some_ stuff left when the magic finally goes, but I haven’t managed to get it to work yet and most of the people who can do that kind of stuff have either already lost their magic or are evil. It doesn’t seem to be something you can teach.”

“But if you had a magical item that could track things, it would still work?”

“Should do. Of course, there aren’t any, at least none that we have.”

“I’m pretty sure I know a guy who can make one.”

“You know a – oh. You mean X.” Willow said. She sounded disapproving. “I wouldn’t, Xan. You don’t know what he might charge for it, and besides who’s to say that he can do it at all? If magic’s gone kaput, then he might be out of business.”

“It’s got to be worth a try.”

~*~

Xander walked back into Verdant. Oliver had taken Thea off to one side and was talking to her quietly – Xander assumed about Merlyn being her father – and Diggle and Felicity were watching them, with Felicity looking like she’d really like to be joining in. Nyssa and Sara were walking up and down, and, even though they looked like they were having a heated conversation and weren’t paying attention to anything much, Xander got the distinct impression that they were patrolling. They were probably working out how Merlyn got in. Rose, meanwhile, was sitting in the exact same place and somehow managing to look angry, even though her face was immobile.

“No luck on the magic front.” Xander declared. “At least not now. Still, I know someone who might be able to get us some leads, but it’ll take a few hours at least.”

“I can hack into the city’s cameras.” Felicity volunteered. “Try and find him that way.” Then she frowned. “I mean, we are looking for Slade, right? Or Merlyn? Or both?”

“Just Slade for now.” Oliver said quietly, with a look at Thea. “Merlyn isn’t an issue for the time being. We need to stop Slade before he gets any more Mirakuru soldiers working for him.”

“I will contact the League.” Nyssa said. “We will find him.”

“Right, so that’s a plan!” Xander said cheerfully. “Now, if only I could find Vi-“

He was interrupted by a distant boom, almost like a thunderclap. Of course, the fact that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky kind of put paid to that.

“Did anyone else hear that?” Felicity asked after a few moments.

“Uh huh.” Xander replied. “I’m just really hoping that isn’t what I think it is.”

They all rushed outside, to see a plume of smoke rising in the distance.

Xander’s phone started ringing. “Hey, Vi. Please tell me that was an exploding gas pipe or something.”

“Sadly, no. Someone just detonated a bomb in the middle of a bank. A couple of girls were nearby, saw it go up. It’s... not pretty.”

Xander hung up without saying anything else, and then turned to face Oliver. “So, any reason why Slade would want to blow up a bank?”

Oliver shook his head slowly. “No. None that I can think of.”

~*~

It wasn’t, as it turned out, anything to do with Slade. At least not as far as anyone could tell. He didn’t seem like the sort of person who would post a three-hundred page manifesto all over the internet, filled with copious rants about banks, big companies and politicians.

The good news was that Felicity was able to pinpoint the frequency that the bomber had used to detonate his bomb. The bad news was that they had no idea where’s he’d strike next, and there was only a brief window between the frequency becoming active and the bomb going off. Even if they’d had more people, they simply couldn’t cover the whole city. That meant that they had to try and work out where he might be.

“QC?” Xander suggested. “You guys are pretty unpopular these days.”

“Could be.” Oliver nodded. “After the theft, the raid by the Count and with Isabel in hospital, it probably wouldn’t take much to wipe out the company completely.”

“There are banks all over the place.” Diggle said. “The bomber could hit any one of them. We can’t cover them all.”

“He already targeted one bank.” Nyssa replied. “It would be foolish to target another bank, given that much of his vitriol is directed towards other quarries.”

“Same goes for companies.” Diggle said. “QC’s just the most noticeable one, now that Merlyn Global’s collapsed.”

“There’s only one politician though.” Vi said suddenly. “Blood. He’s the only one running for Mayor. If you’ve got a thing against politicians, his office would be a great place for it. He has people in and out of there all the time, too, it probably wouldn’t be that hard to set up a bomb there.”

Xander nodded. “Plus we already think that Blood is suspicious-“

“We do?” Felicity asked.

Vi snorted. “Xander does. Even though he’s squeaky clean.”

“Is he though? Someone really wanted Altman dead, and then all of a sudden there’s this guy ready to step into his shoes...”

“Let’s not get into this again.” Vi interrupted.

Xander opened his mouth, then shut it again. He had been about to point out that, if he was Blood, he’d definitely be upping his security right about now – and if Xander was right about Blood’s association with the man in the skull mask, then the kind of security that he’d have access to would be something worth keeping an eye on. But if Vi was going to doubt his detective skills _again_ , then he wasn’t going to bother.

“So... we’re splitting between QC and Blood, then?” Sara said after a little while.

“I want me and Vi on Blood.” Xander said quickly. 

Rose grunted urgently.

“Rose too, if she’s up and about by then. We can split the rest of the Slayers between the two locations.”

~*~

They had Slayers in nearby buildings, cafes, on the street – they even had a few in Blood’s office itself, just in case.

Vi was lurking in a nearby doorway when she heard a voice come over the earpiece that Oliver had given her.

It wasn’t a voice she recognised. It was male, deep, and it had an Australian accent. “Hello, Vi. I’ve temporarily hi-jacked your coms. No one else can hear me. I’d advise you not to try to contact anyone by other means, otherwise people will die.”

“So you’re Slade, I guess.” Vi muttered.

“If you know who I am, you know enough to do exactly as I say.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a bomber around-“

“Not anymore. The bomb, however, is still a threat. Now, walk down the street. There’s a building with a broken window. Go inside.”

“What’s inside?”

“You’ll find out when you get there, won’t you? Of course, if you _don’t_ , then the bomb will go off. And in case you thought that you might be able to trace the signal before the bomb goes live, I wouldn’t worry. I made a few improvements.”

“Fine.” Vi said, walking.

“Good.” Slade replied.

Sure enough, there was a building with a broken window. The door was wide open. Vi paused, trying to see if there was anyone inside, but she couldn’t see anyone. She couldn’t see anyone in the building opposite either, which meant that she probably wasn’t going to get shot by a sniper, but that wasn’t really reassuring.

After a moment, she went inside. She’d half expected to be blown up the moment she crossed the threshold, but nothing happened. No sword-wielding Australian secret agent jumped out at her. “Right, I’m here.” Vi said. “What now?”

There was no reply.

“Great.” Vi muttered. “That’s just great.”

She moved into through further into the hallway – all the doors were shut, except for the one immediately to her left, which lead into the front room. The room that had had its window broken. Given that Vi seemed to be shepherded towards that room, she strongly felt that she shouldn’t go in there. Instead, she tried one of the closed doors. She wasn’t surprised to find that it was locked.

She was surprised to hear an explosion in the distance.

“What was that? I did what you said!” Vi yelled.

“Yes, you did.” Slade said.

It took Vi a moment to realise that the voice hadn’t come over the earpiece, but by then the door next to her had slammed open and there was a sword streaking down towards her head. She ducked, throwing herself out of the way. She rolled when she hit the ground, wincing slightly as the broken glass cut her, and leapt back to her feet.

Slade stood in the doorway, and sheathed his sword. “I’ve heard that you’re the best fighter that Xander has.” He said conversationally.

“Well, I guess you’re about to find out.” Vi said, stepping towards him before launching a kick at his knee.

At least, that’s what she planned to happen. What actually happened was the sort of stumbled forward, her legs not seeming to hold her weight, and then she collapsed.

“I don’t fight battles unless I know I can win.” Slade continued conversationally. “That’s why I coated the glass in Vertigo. It’s the same formula I used on Moira Queen. It begins with your muscles. They stop receiving signals from your brain. Then there’s a while when you feel pleasantly numb – sadly, the Count didn’t have enough time to work out how to shorten that stage – and then you end up in excruciating, constant pain.” Slade crouched down to look at her. “Of course, you won’t be alive long enough to get to that stage, which I suppose is something to be thankful for.”

“Why?” Vi grunted. “Why me?”

“Hmm? Oh, like I said, you’re the best fighter Xander has. And you’re his friend. He needs to learn that if you work with the Oliver, everyone you care about dies. Either he kills them, or I do. He needs to get the message.” Slade said calmly. “There are other reasons too, of course, but I don’t have the time to tell you them. I want to kill you before the pain kicks in. You deserve that much.”

Vi could do nothing but watch as Slade stood and unsheathed his sword. She couldn’t even scream as he slid it into her chest.


End file.
